Kerri Nelson, Chief Operations Officer at Clarivate, discusses three key principles for creating long-term success by promoting a more flexible, Connected Workplace aligned to company values.
Today, it’s clear that a more flexible, Connected Workplace model for many organizations, is here to stay. However, when it comes to building the workplace of the future, while the latest technology tools and platforms are essential, it’s more about understanding, trusting and empowering colleagues while accentuating a customer-focused and purpose-led company culture.
Principle 1: Make it easy to connect
A successful Connected Workplace thrives on the ability to create ways for colleagues to easily communicate and build relationships. With the increase in virtual collaboration, this can be even more challenging to do easily and effectively. At Clarivate, we encourage colleagues to use MS Teams to chat, share photos and experiences, record team calls and hold networking sessions in order to stay connected and leverage technology in a more fun, engaging way.
Some of the creative things our teams have done virtually to date include:
- painting tote bags with their kids;
- “yoga at your desk” sessions;
- favorite hat day;
- playing Pictionary; and
- sharing pictures of their most interesting ancestor.
We continue to collect many more ideas weekly and share via an internal blog called Ways of Working Wednesdays.
Principle 2: Elevate the art of listening
In order to know if we are on the right track, gathering feedback from colleagues is critical. We want colleagues to have a voice in shaping our Connected Workplace strategy. Never has the art of listening been so critical in order to understand the nuances – what works for some regions, teams and individuals may not work for all. We leverage our local site leaders to be the eyes and ears for our colleagues as well as to help us communicate at the local level.
In partnership with our site leaders, we conduct small, regional roundtables to understand what is working and what can improve from local perspectives. In addition, we just completed our colleague engagement survey where we received more than 6,000 comments, many of which will help improve our hybrid working model.
We uncovered common themes such as the desire for a more flexible working model, the need to increase opportunities to collaborate, celebrate and socialize with colleagues and to ensure we come together for training and onboarding new colleagues.
Our commitment to a Connected Workplace is a strategic imperative, enabling greater work-life balance and teamwork where colleagues have the flexibility to work from home or come into a workplace 1-2 days a week.
Principle 3: Inspire action, ownership and empowerment
Implementing a Connected Workplace model involves a shift from thinking company-first to colleague-first. In this new age of more flexible, connected working environments, individual colleagues are in more control of their own time. They have significantly more flexibility when it comes to where and when they work and are more empowered and trusted than ever before by their leaders.
The assumption that work can only be done during the traditional 9-5 workday in an office is outdated. Colleagues who contribute creatively – the idea generators, the innovators, the problem solvers – often do their best work outside of traditional work hours so removing constraints and focusing on results is a driver behind this change. That is why many companies are consciously evolving from fixed work patterns to more flexible, balanced work arrangements.
At Clarivate, all of our colleagues will have the opportunity to collaborate in one of our many global workplaces. We also have roles where colleagues will have the option of working from home full time. This flexibility is critical to our hiring strategy to acquire and retain the best talent possible to drive long-term success.
Read more about our Connected Workplace model.
