The Connected Company - Edition #3

Since I’ve been cooking up an upcoming virtual event at ScreenCloud, and as I recently said happy birthday to my mother who lives 6,000+ miles away, words like belonging, community, and connection have been on my mind.

Have you ever been surrounded by a sea of people you're familiar with and still felt like an outsider? Has loneliness crept under your front door and woken you up in the middle of the night? Have you been searching for a trusted community where you can feel seen, heard, valued, where you can encounter genuine connections?    

If you say yes to any of these questions, congratulations—you're a real human!  

We all want to experience a sense of belonging, to build relationships that last, and to be a part of something greater.

Disconnectedness might be an unfortunate by-product of the global health crisis, but as humans and a community, we're fully capable of mastering our circumstances. 

How does this translate into business? As companies reinvent their working processes and redefine their action plans, it's essential to remember that only a strong culture foundation can enable transformation. That means creating and actively fostering an environment where employees feel engaged, belonged, and appreciated. Let's dive into this month's newsletter to find out how. 

Quote of the Month

“One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing. In fact, fitting in is one of the greatest barriers to belonging. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be in order to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”
— Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Your Healthy Dose of Insights

The power and structure of belonging

This is an excellent excerpt from Peter Block’s book Community: The Structure of Belonging. In it, Block describes the different meanings of the word belong and the fragmentation of our communities and explores how we can become more connected citizens. Though he speaks about our society at large, the main ideas in this piece are incredibly relevant to modern workplaces. It's a long read, but definitely worth your commute, at-home coffee break, or canceled Zoom call. 

Employee engagement revisit

Keeping employees motivated and engaged has always been a tough egg to crack. Coupled with the drama brought by 2020, it's become an even harder challenge for companies. Actively disengaged employees cost their organizations $483 to $605 billion per year. Ouch! That's not the kind of money you want to spend, especially amid a global pandemic. To help you get a better picture of what helps drive, inspire, and retain your workforce, we've gathered the employee engagement stats and trends for this year.

Workplace relationship advice from Esther Perel

Esther Perel is a distinguished psychotherapist, author, and speaker on relationships. I first watched her famous TED talk six years ago and was blown away. In her newest podcast series, How’s Work, she brings her expertise on modern relationships to the workplace. This article distills ten key lessons from her podcast to help you better navigate relationships that come with work.

I wish you were...

Bosses can make or break your career. If you've looked at the engagement stats article mentioned earlier, you know that 75% of employees who voluntarily quit did so because of their manager, not the job itself. So how do you become a better boss? This author asked one million-plus LinkedIn followers what they wish every boss would start doing. Ready to hear their most secret desires?

Self-improvement time 

Got any plans for the weekend? If not, switch on your learning mode and sign up for the On Leadership course. It's taught by one of today's most prominent world leaders, Jeff Weiner. Weiner was LinkedIn's CEO for 11 years and was instrumental in Microsoft's $26.2-billion acquisition of LinkedIn back in 2016.

You'll learn about the three pillars of leadership: awareness, synthesis, and inspiration, and how to manage your teams compassionately. His brilliant insights are relevant not only to leaders, but also to your co-workers, friends, and even children. The course lasts for three hours and is completely free. I guarantee it's time well-spent!

Thank you for your service

One of the best ways to engage and motivate your employees is to reward them for their hard work and dedication (we actually wrote an article on how to nurture a recognition-rich environment here). Since many of us aren't heading back to the office any time soon (and some of us even said goodbye to the office forever), it's important to rethink employee rewards to better accommodate remote workers. The team at Bonusly recently put their brains together and came up with some cool, remote-friendly ideas to shower your employees with admiration and gratitude.

The pain (and pleasure) of writing a book

In the July newsletter, you've probably heard about a new book project that two of ScreenCloud's founders, David and Mark are undertaking. It's a daunting venture into the unknown!

In the latest Behind The Screens podcast episode, the duo sat down and had an open conversation about the intricacy of the book's conception, their struggles, and how they're balancing their different writing approaches to reach a desirable outcome. No matter what kind of big, hairy project you might be working on, chances are there's something helpful in here. 

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Thanks to Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash for the cover photo 🙌