Burnout, Bottlenecks, & Bureaucracy:
The Result Of Remote Work

A department within a global financial services company found itself grappling with a new challenge: remote work. Suspicions had arisen that one department’s structure was becoming increasingly hierarchical, causing concerns about cohesive networks, manager burnout, and slow decision-making. In their quest to address this, one leader turned to a dynamic solution that could swiftly uncover the underlying dynamics at play.

Enter the People Collaboration Accelerator, Innovisor’s ready-to-go solution that combines network insights and employee perceptions to address collaborative connectivity and workplace wellbeing.

Turning to Innovisor’s People Collaboration Accelerator, the organization embarked on a journey to decode their team’s dynamics. This ready-to-go solution is purpose-built to delve deep into team interactions, unraveling network intricacies, communication flows, and hierarchical imprints. Executed seamlessly within a week, this solution harnessed the power of network analysis to reveal the department’s relationships and perceptions.

What started as a gut feeling by one leader, now had the data insights to back their fear. The risk assessment revealed that the group of managers had become the focal point of the collaboration network. The analysis also revealed in the informal energy networks managers were sought after at a rate more than triple that of employees, a metric that far exceeded the Innovisor benchmark. These two network discoveries illuminated the creeping hierarchy that had raised alarm bells and signaled an urgent need to address the prevailing over-reliance on managers. Consequences include blocks in decision-making, increased risk of manager burn-out, and disruption of the department functionality if one or two key managers leave their roles.

Note: The risk assessment below shows the collaboration network. The squares represent the managers, and the disks represent the employees. Slide over to see the simulated network, without managers.

The solution didn’t just diagnose the problem, it shed light on the remedy. The People Collaboration Accelerator’s risk assessment identified “connectors” – the smallest group of individuals that will bridge silos and reshape collaboration. Bringing these 6 employee connectors (represented in the network below by the purple disks) together improves cohesion, empowers employee action, and alleviates the dependency risk on managers (therefore reducing risk of overload and burnout).

In harnessing the insights and actionable recommendations from the People Collaboration Accelerator, the financial services company effectively unveiled the layers of hierarchy that had crept in during remote work. It allowed the organization to swiftly uncover the hierarchy that had stealthily emerged in the realm of remote work. Through its efficient execution and insightful analysis, the diagnostic not only identified challenges but also provided actionable solutions, ultimately leading to a more balanced, empowered, and connected department!