Employee Pride (Not Location) Is What Matters in Remote Work

Employee Pride (Not Location) Is What Matters in Remote Work

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically reshaped our world. Many organizational leaders still don’t know what the future holds. For many businesses, it’s been a tough pill to swallow that up to 50% of employees want to stay remote. Moreover, many say they will quit rather than stop working from home. 

So how do you decide what’s best for everyone? And how do you do so while maintaining the critical bottom-line of business performance? 
 
The good news is that making remote work a standard practice is possible. The fact is that—for many  of today’s professions—productivity and other important metrics aren’t achieved or broken by the question of whether employees are physically in the office. Instead, getting employees to deliver consistently high-quality work starts with understanding something that has nothing to do with location: the PRIDE they feel about their work and their company. 
 
Below, we’ll talk about why workplace pride matters, and how you can build it among your remote workers.

The Importance of Building Pride in the Workplace

Contrary to what some executives feared, remote work and business success metrics like productivity aren’t inversely correlated. WorkProud’s new report, How Pride Drives Business Value for Organizations, found that workplace pride has a positive, tangible impact on organizational business outcomes.
 
However, a majority of leaders still seem to struggle with this question, and the resultant workplace trust issues can damage employee pride. Despite evidence that remote work has been an huge success, 68% of executives want employees in the office at least three days a week
 
Imagine for a moment that executives stopped worrying about micromanaging remote workers. Imagine, instead, that executives focused on boosting recognition, respect, meaning, responsibility, trust, and autonomy in the workplace. When organizations focus on these things, they often see massive bottom-line benefits. In fact, according to The WorkProud Study, employees with high individual pride are 10 times more likely to be highly satisfied with their jobs. The data also showed that employees with high company pride are 24 times more likely to stay at their current companies.
 
Clearly, employee pride pays off.
 
Additionally, Gallup research shows that acknowledging the individual through trust and recognition is a low-cost, high-impact way to generate higher engagement and, therefore, prideIndeed, in the face of the pandemic era’s ‘Great Resignation’, focusing on building workplace pride is HR’s best bet on retaining employees, improving performance, and generating higher employee engagement

How to Build Pride in the Workplace

Employee Pride (Not Location) Is What Matters in Remote Work

So how can you build the type of pride that inspires employees to stick around and add value? In our study, How Pride Drives Business Value for Organizations, we found four ways to help build a workplace where employees feel proud.

1. Make Recognizing Remote Employees a Priority

Recognition is the jet fuel behind workplace pride—don’t let it become an afterthought. Research from HR Technologist showed 40% of employees said they’d put more energy into performance with more frequent recognition. At the end of the day, the secret to boosting pride is generating more recognitionRecognition (and feedback) directly contributes to an individual’s sense of purpose and pride.

2. Help Employees Understand the Impact of their Work

Employees want to understand how their work makes a difference. Show employees how their job impacts the company. Moreover, show them how the company contributes to their community. These things directly impact individual pride in their work and pride in the company.

3. Encourage Teams to Periodically Reflect

Ask employees and managers to take time to reflect on their successes. Encouraging regular team meetings that include recognition, learnings, and feedback loops. This feedback and recognition are clearly linked to an increased sense of pride. 

4. Make Sure Your Initiatives Align with Your Business Values

Many organizations struggle to create initiatives that drive meaningful results. Companies should review their internal-facing programs through a lens of employee pride. Do you have effective, inclusive programs that make employees feel proud? Do employees feel proud of both their work and their company? If not, it may be time to reexamine your initiatives.

Employee Pride Pays Off for Everyone

Employee Pride (Not Location) Is What Matters in Remote Work

Rewinding the workforce landscape to where it was in 2019 isn’t an option—and that’s a good thing. The most successful companies will be those who choose to invest in their people where they are and put humans at the heart of every initiative. The key to retaining your best workers, staying productive, and hitting your KPIs doesn’t lie in the question of where employees work. It lies in your employees’ pride, both in the work they do, and in your company.
 
Download your free copy of the WorkProud Study, How Pride Drives Business Value for Organizations.

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WorkProud is committed to helping its clients create a unified approach to the employee experience by helping them build cultures of workplace pride. Trusted by millions of users at some of the world’s most recognized employer brands, WorkProud delivers a comprehensive approach to building company cultures that inspire people to be Proud of their Work and Proud of their Company.

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