The Heartbeat Conversations: Enabling Employees to Feel Psychologically Safe

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way people work. When people started working from their homes, it also made them disconnected from the workplace. A majority of employees expected to continue to work from home, and organisations across the world saw high attritions during the latter half of the year 2021, and the main reason was that the employees did not feel a sense of belonging. Irrespective of whether the organisation adopts work from home, work from office, or even hybrid, it has become important for organisations to reinvent how they connect with their employees, to ensure that the employees feel that they are part of a larger cause. This study captures the evolution of ‘The Heartbeat Conversations’ (THBC), which is the critical component of The Heartbeat Framework (THBF). THBC is an outcome of a study within a product development company in South India with about 33 members over a period of 22 months. This study includes the iterative approach to refine the employee connect on a cadence, based on the feedback received. Through this work, we desire to provide a reference approach to initiate THBC to help practitioners. Two significant observations are (a) Keep the approach flexible and (b) People open up when they feel safe, and their opinions are valued. Hence, practitioners must ensure that they create a safe space for people to express themselves, which may sometimes need coaching at the leadership level.