Work Happy Wrap-Up: 9 Learnings on Support, Communication and Technology at LUSH

In our monthly Work Happy webinar series, Managing Director Alex Graves hosts guest speakers in leading roles who share their stories from the past six months and what they’re planning for the future of their workplaces.

In September’s episode, we sat down with Nikki Williams, Head of People Experience at LUSH. Nikki spoke to us about how recent circumstances have impacted LUSH, their approach to internal communications, and the steps they’ve taken to bring together teams from factory, office and store settings. If you missed the webinar, you can view the recording, or catch up on the top nine learnings from Nikki’s experiences below:  

Managing People Experience – Top Nine Learnings for 2020 

Support 

• Training – No one knows a team’s needs better than their manager. Providing quality training for senior management staff will provide them with the skills and knowledge needed to help embed autonomy and trust when carrying out decisions based on their team’s needs. 
  
• Well-being support – Consider where well-being challenges may lie, and pre-emptively provide support to help mitigate against these problems before they arise. This may be things such as ‘Zoom fatigue’ or working from home issues, where something as simple as choice and flexibility can often be a solution. Or, it could be looking at alternatives to the social aspects of work that aren’t always considered in remote set-ups.
  

  “If we don’t look after ourselves collectively, we won’t be able to look after and do our best for the business.”

   

• Family dinner discussions – Have the difficult conversations. It’s like bringing your family together round the dinner table to have those open, honest, hard, but necessary discussions. As well as facing challenges head on, these sorts of open discussions can encourage a family or community environment.
  

Communication

• Quick and open – Where possible, transition to a single, central communication channel to make internal comms easier. But, if this isn’t an option, make sure every channel is covered; messaging platform, social media, phone or carrier pigeon! This will make sure all your communication is open and transparent, and everyone is kept in the loop.
• Discussion groups – Create collaborative working groups with a mix of employees from different backgrounds and experience levels, and encourage two-way communications. This helps ensure the How? What? Why? questions are answered with input from across the business, and really brings out the employee voice.
  

  “Build your relationships. They’re the most important things within the business.”

   

• Unified Message – Keep your messaging simple to help ensure a consistent, unified voice that is pushed from the top down, to every team. In challenging circumstances, or times of change, it’s important that employees at every level are unified in their approach to work.  

Technology 

• Stay up to date – Make sure your technology is up to date. Whichever platforms you use, keep on top of new developments, feature updates and best practices. Your technology requirements should be regularly reviewed and refreshed to make sure it continues to meet business and people needs.
  
• Check in – Have regular check-ins with your employees to make sure they have proper remote access and work from home capabilities, and they’re comfortable with the technology and processes being used. Not everyone is used to working in such a way, particularly those who aren’t typically desk based. It’s important that every team member feels able and comfortable to execute their work.
  

  “To maintain that family feel, we try to take a very tailored approach to each person. What works for me, might not work for you.

   

• Training and adoption – With any new technology, it’s important to make sure your team are confident and fully trained to ensure adoption and uptake is high. A fully designed training and adoption plan should be a core element of any new tech change.  

Changing to modern workplace practices can be a difficult transition to navigate, but there are solutions to suit every team and business. If you have any questions about how you can help your team to Work Happy, get in touch.  

We’re finalising the details for our next Work Happy Webinar, so make sure to stay updated with all our future events here.