Good Work in Challenging Times - The Results
Our working life matters to our psychological health and happiness and it will be impacted in the months ahead. We can't avoid this situation but we can make it better for ourselves and the people around us.
“People need to feel they’re using their skills to make a meaningful contribution. They need to have a sense of belonging in the organisation while also feeling like they have autonomy and ownership in their work.”
Last week, we shared a survey about ‘Good Work in Challenging Times’ to our newsletter followers and social networks, which drew on self-determination theory and the basic psychological needs of autonomy, belonging and competence. The sample who responded was small (n=65), but they helped us refine our methodology for further release and present the insights in this article. The results are not generalisable to a broader population or what is happening in your organisation. We share them to demonstrate why gathering this data can help focus your resources on what matters most to your teams.
Autonomy
“I’m in control of my decisions and the course of my life”
Belonging
“I have close, meaningful social relationships with others”
Competence
“I can deal with the challenges I’m facing in the world”
If you’re interested in working with us, don’t hesitate to get in touch
The Headline Results
Our survey asked about 21 aspects of working life, measuring how people felt each would be impacted in the months to come. When the questions were grouped into basic psychological needs*, we found people felt positively about their sense of belonging and negatively about their autonomy and competence.
Our sample wasn’t large enough to detect whether these results were significant, but we had predicted this trend. In recent weeks, we’ve felt ourselves come closer together as a team (belonging) while many projects and long-term goals fell apart around us (autonomy and competence), and we expected this to be mirrored in other knowledge workers. It was interesting to reflect on this hypothesis while noting the dramatic focus on isolation and social connection in the business press. We haven’t proven this to be misjudged, but our results offer cause for concern. As usual with human attitudes and behaviour change, we need to suspend our intuitions before we leap to action.
Digging deeper
Below are the three specific questions people felt would be most negatively affected by the changes they are making to their working lives. The numbers are taken from a 7-point Likert scale, where 0 represents 'no change', -3 represents a very negative change and + 3 represents a very positive change.
“Most days I feel a sense of accomplishment from working”
“I feel pressured at work”
“I do not feel very competent when I am at work”
These feel obvious when written down, but they do not seem to have been a focus of attention or resources in organisations. We suspect it feels easier to jump to promoting social connection when that might not be a priority problem. The areas above - related to autonomy and competence - are less intuitive, but they are also basic human needs that link directly to our psychological health. They deserve to be protected.
As well as addressing the challenges to good work, we also want to think about making the most of the opportunities. Below are the three questions that people felt would be most positively affected by the changes they are making to their working lives. Again, the numbers are taken from a 7-point Likert scale, where 0 represents 'no change', -3 represents a very negative change and + 3 represents a very positive change.
“I can learn interesting new skills on my job”
“I really like the people I work with.”
“I can input to how my job gets done”
What do these results tell us if they’re not generalisable?
The size of our sample restricts our confidence in these results, and the bias in our social network means we cannot extend them to a broader population. But they go further than simply showing the value of repeating the methodology within your own organisation:
Our respondents identify both opportunities and threats to their working lives. It is reasonable to expect this to be replicated in other communities.
These threats and opportunities do not always match our intuitions about what matters most. Popular attention and resource allocation can misalign with priorities on the ground without diagnostic research.
Even with our small sample, statistically significant differences started to emerge within groups. We use age to illustrate this below, but sub-populations could include anything from organisation functions to individual personality traits.
The changes we're making to our working lives by age
What are we supposed to do now?
The changes we’re making to our working lives will impact us in radically different ways, depending who we are, what we’re doing and the challenges we’re facing outside of work. If you’re in leadership or HR, we don’t think you should try to solve all these challenges directly. We think you should encourage and support managers and teams to find answers for themselves.
This means not simply gathering insight but delivering it at local level, so managers know where to focus their time and energy (‘cocktail hours’ might sound good, but they may also cure an ill that doesn’t exist within a team). Last year, with Nationwide Building Society, we showed that just holding a self-guided discussion about psychological needs had a significant effect on all three pillars. Perhaps most importantly, reducing the internal pressure people to a significant degree. We think that partnership offers a helpful road-map for the months ahead (click on the picture to read more).
We need to take this much further in the current context. As patterns start to emerge within teams (imagine 40% of your employees report their sense of accomplishment is under threat), we’ll start to design and test interventions laser-focused on that need. While we’re starting to gather those insights for our partners, we’re also researching how to promote kindness, compassion and social cohesion within managers and teams. We want to do everything we can to amplify their motivation to come together and act together on the insights we’ll share with them.
So, lots to do in a very strange time. We will keep sharing as we go, with as many open-source tools, ideas and materials as we can. Please let me know if we could do more, if you have any questions or if you would like to use any of our work within your organisation. Just give us a shout at hello@morethannow.co.uk or get in touch below:
The Basic Psychological Needs Scale is ©2020 by the Center for Self-Determination Theory. It has been adapted by MoreThanNow with permission. The use of Self-Determination Theory information and materials does not imply endorsement by CSDT.