As our Caregiver Experience Committee continues to work on ways to enhance engagement and connection to our leaders across IS, we’re spotlighting best practices employed by different parts of the organization that might provide inspiration for improving caregiver engagement on your own team.
This month, we look at a concept from the IS Strategy & PMO team that has helped drive meaningful skip-level connections between its IS executive leader down through her entire organization.
As an organization that was made up of teams that had previously lived in different parts of IS and with several new leaders, IS Strategy & PMO had no 2019 survey results to point to a clear area of opportunity to improve over the past year. With many recent leadership transitions and scope changes to the work of the teams, a safe space was needed where people could speak, voice concerns, share ideas, and build trust and rapport with each other.
The idea of regularly, informal skip-level listening sessions came about and morphed into a “vritual coffee chat” hosted via Teams meeting by Strategy & PMO GVP Ivette de Rubens. So far, Ivette has hosted four of these and the response has been positive, leading her to continue to make them a normal part of her monthly calendar.
More about “Coffee with Ivette”
- Grew organically from the listening sessions and their success.
- Focus is on “non–business talk” – casual chat, personal connections, wellbeing, etc.
- Has created personal connections among team members and with Ivette.
- Calendared for an hour each month and will continue into 2021.
- Her entire team is invited. Her direct reports have 1:1s with her. It is fine for them to attend, but the focus is on her spending quality time with those skip-level reports who don’t have as much time or visibility with her.
Insights
- This casual virtual format seems uniquely-suited to the COVID era.
- Listening and socializing online is a byproduct of the “new normal” for work/socializing virtually from home.
- With traditional pathways of connecting leadership and caregivers cut off, building community virtually has become vital, and leaders are adapting with success.
If you have a best practice for supporting caregiver engagement and experience that you wish to share, or if you have questions about how to support your team, contact John Lee, PM, IS Caregiver Experience Committee.