In this new digital era, it’s important to refrain from becoming desensitized to the technology of our everyday lives.
Too often, we forget the meaning behind the innovations we interact with – we forget the why behind the what. Technology serves people and not the other way around.
The fabric of who we are as a people doesn’t unwind when we step foot in the door of our places of work. For Fíonta and many other companies, work has expanded to almost anywhere in the world that can get wifi access. Retaining what makes us human and diversifying how we work has never been more evident as we evaluate the major themes in the “Great Resignation.” The what is quitting, and not always with another job lined up. The why is a lack of connection. It has been proven that connection is the number one reason why people leave their jobs today. Not because they don’t like their boss or their work isn’t stimulating enough. They simply don’t have enough connection—with leadership, peers, and even with their clients. And in the remote-first world of work, employees are combating isolation and learning how to cope. There is a void where human interaction naturally unfolds in the workplace. The easy way out of this conundrum might seem like an obvious route – to bring everyone back into the brick and mortar. To return to 2019 and the status quo. To return to when work meant four walls, traffic battles, and much less time with their families. And despite all this, they weren’t actually more productive.
The status quo isn’t good enough anymore. We went through a global pandemic together, which has changed our lives and pushed us to new places, both individually and globally. But one of the most redeeming aspects of our human nature is our ability to adapt, solve problems, and rebuild, better. Many companies of all sizes recognize that they can’t go back to the status quo; they can only go forward.
So, what’s the cost of doing nothing…or reverting to the status quo? The cost is a talented, valuable, capable, creative workforce. The cost is people, and people are much more expensive to replace than to keep. But you lose more than just money when you lose employees – institutional knowledge, the employee’s unique voice, perspective, and their hard-earned and cultivated client relationships.
That means the only real way to succeed is to move forward and to do all the things we do best as humans. We must adapt, problem-solve, and rebuild. And maybe it doesn’t have to be so difficult. Perhaps we can just think about what we need as people and then work backward from there. People need connection and want to share their experiences – it reminds us we are not alone.
At Fíonta, our core values have spurred the pursuit of technology that is a force for good and serves people, especially our people.
There’s no better platform to leverage than Slack to foster connection for employees that have gone remote or prefer a hybrid work environment and even for those organizations that prefer to work from the office for various reasons. As a Salesforce.org Premium Partner, we know this because we live it every day. Slack provides a tremendous platform for getting work done and getting it done well – for collaboration in every department from business development to Salesforce consultants to HR and everywhere in between. It provides channels for efficient problem solving and workflows that reduce the time previously spent on manual tasks.
But there’s a world in Slack that extends beyond the given day-to-day life of employee interaction, beyond just work. That world in Slack is meant to be a place where people can do people things – like talk about music and sourdough bread and how difficult today’s Wordle was and good gluten-free recipes and vent about what it’s like being a toddler mom these days and if something is or maybe isn’t compostable. It’s a force for good, for caring about both the work a person is employed to accomplish and for the person and their desire to connect, to be seen, known, and appreciated. And this world in Slack isn’t just created to increase productivity to increase revenue – it’s available and thriving because it is the right thing to do. It is right to intentionally foster community in digital spaces that have every chance to create isolation. Slack disrupts that looming threat of disconnection, improving employee retention, engagement, and productivity.
Slack takes organizations to the next level. It’s not a “nice to have” tool – it’s a clear and obvious force for good in a highly competitive, overstimulating, complex world of work that will never be the same.
Foster these connections. Keep your people and invest in technology that serves them. Enable them to thrive because businesses thrive when people thrive, and our communities reap the benefits. We know firsthand that sitting at your home office or in a coffee shop or *insert a place you’ve always wanted to visit and now can* and doing your work is a lot more fun when you get notifications on your favorite channels from coworkers turned friends who have shared their favorite recipes or a playlist of purely 80’s music or a true-crime podcast that has gone viral.
Out there, a world awaits with a Slack channel pinging, and someone from accounting wants to see that really (really) cute picture of your dog.