Exclusive Interview with Jo Weech, Founder and Principal Consultant, Exemplary Consultants
“Lead By Example”
Posted on 05-06-2020, Read Time: 5 Min
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The COVID-19 crisis has impacted various aspects of our lives - especially work. With remote working becoming the norm, employees and employers alike, especially the first-timers, are experiencing the ups and downs related to the situation.
On one hand, employees are worried about job security and the challenges of working as a team, on the other, employers are facing issues such as engagement and productivity drop, among others. It now falls upon the leadership to keep the team up and running.
How are the leaders handling the situation? HR.com interviewed senior-level executives from various organizations and asked them to share their lessons and insights.
Q: How has the COVID-19 crisis affected your business?
Jo: All of our billable employees are affected by the Code Orange by the government agency. All of the submittals to contracts had to be put on hold due to the closing of the Contractor Security Office. Three contracts that were supposed to commence work in April, May, and August have now been pushed to next year, so all of the people we had pipelined for those contracts may be lost by then. Everyone is afraid to make a move, so there has been a drastically reduced willingness to consider changing companies right now.
Q: Are your employees working remotely? If so, what are some of the challenges you are facing while managing your remote workforce?
Jo: My entire team works remotely. So the only change is that we are turning on our cameras 2x/week for lunch time gatherings.
Q: What employee engagement challenges do you come across, especially in the current scenario, where everyone is working from home? What are you doing about it?
Jo: The one person who lives alone and is quite social has experienced social contact withdrawal. So we increased our video meetings from 2 to 4 per week, with two of them being just “lunch hangouts”.
Q: Are you providing or planning to provide any emotional and mental health programs for employees?
Jo: There is an EAP but more importantly, we created a Slack channel so that people can discuss how they are doing, everyone can share support, and provide humour and encouragement.
Q: What leadership lessons have this health crisis taught you?
Jo: Lead by example. It is imperative to provide access to all, to focus on uplifting and encouraging speech, and to take a sincere interest in how everyone is doing.
Q: What positive change has transpired that you would want to maintain?
Jo: Lunch hangouts. Probably will just be once per week, but in addition to the two video meetings/week that we do, we have all gotten to know each other better by playing games, and sharing random trivia about ourselves.
Q: Would you like to add anything?
Jo: Keeping in touch is not just emails with valuable information. Sharing is caring, but not in a sterile way. Everything must be top—down but if you have a leader who isn’t scoring high on the EQ scale, then others must step in to fill in the gaps.
Author Bio
| Jo Weech is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Exemplary Consultants. Jo has been named 300+ Women In HR Technology Worth Watching; won an HRLA award for leadership excellence; and the 2017 Gary Cluff Award for Recruiting Excellence. |
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