Create connections in safe places. It’s one thing to make people feel safe and able to share their ideas and perspectives. It’s another thing entirely to ensure that leaders return that honesty with compassion and trust. Organizations need to invest in developing leaders who make individuals feel safe and respected. No one should feel diminished because they chose to speak up or show vulnerability.

Be transparent to build trust. Feeling out of the loop, not understanding how your work contributes to company goals or lacking constructive feedback causes significant disconnection. Leaders must be willing to communicate openly and with compassion all the time, not just in times of crisis. Not only must they role model this themselves, they must foster it in their teams.

Listen, learn and act. To inspire trust, leaders need to listen, learn and act—individually and collectively. Start with a robust listening framework to make sure all voices are heard, then turn those insights and ideas into action. When people trust their leaders to listen, act and be transparent about progress and feedback, more and better ideas will follow.

Connect people to purpose. The more that people understand how the work they do is aligned with the company’s greater purpose (beyond boosting the bottom line), the more fulfilled and driven they will be. People become even more engaged when they can expand their skills and grow. Investing in people’s development and helping them achieve their aspirations is a clear signal to them that the work they do has meaning.

Make it safe to be yourself. When people can demonstrate their strong sense of self, they forge stronger connections with their team. But this assumes leaders are creating safe spaces for people to be heard and seen—and demonstrating that different ideas and experiences matter to the success of the organization. Along with providing mental resilience resources and tools, leaders must be willing to show their own vulnerability and focus on self care, which gives their team agency to do the same.

Look beyond where—to what, when and how. After two-plus years of remote or hybrid work arrangements for millions of people, it’s easy to confuse the commute from the bed to the desk with the notion of flexibility. They’re not one and the same. Location is only one small piece of the larger idea of flexibility, which should also consider what people work on, when they work and how. Today, fewer than one-fourth of workers surveyed feel they have permission to be flexible and have the autonomy to manage their time to be most productive.

Create a flexibility framework. Flexibility will have a different definition or set of boundaries at every organization and for people in different roles. One size never fits all, not even most. It’s up to leaders to gain a clear understanding of where, when and how people work. From there, they can build a flexibility framework—moving away from rigid structures and hierarchies and designing instead around people and connectivity. They can then apply the framework based on people’s responsibilities to reach the best solution for the role and the individual.

Redefine what it means to ‘come to work’. The entire notion of “coming to work” is ready for a refresh. That means figuring out how teams can maximize the benefits of both time together and time apart—and what matters most to people to make their commute worthwhile. It also requires thinking ahead and designing for people across multiple types of work locations and arrangements. And just like individuals, the entire organization must be able to pivot quickly, given that work and world circumstances will remain fluid.

Establish a robust technology foundation. Companies that use cloud to build a seamless technology and capability foundation are able to support the ever-changing needs of the business by meeting the ever-changing needs of people. At the start of the pandemic, business continuity for many companies depended on people’s equal access to stable internet service and the power of cloud to keep them connected and collaborating. This robust technology foundation is essential to help people work in new ways, wherever they need to be.

Think like a technologist. Armed with access and tools, the next step is to empower people with collaboration technology like Teams, Zoom or WebEx, along with a decent Bluetooth headset. These are still vital, but access isn’t empowerment. Companies need to encourage their people to think like technologists and experiment—using the data and tools in their hands to discover new processes and solutions in their work. When people have this level of autonomy, a stronger sense of connection will take hold along with new levels of innovation.

Look beyond the tools of today. Those companies that are expanding their people’s technology toolbox, along with their agency, are seeing the benefits. Our research found that 86% of workers surveyed who claim to experience omni-connection also reported upgrades to their company’s technology and skillsets, allowing them to work in new ways. That means looking at the upside of emerging technology—like the metaverse—to support equitable opportunities to participate and contribute. It’s also worth exploring the promise of human-machine collaboration. By allowing seamless collaboration between humans and machines, people can contribute to higher-value work and experience a greater sense of purpose.

Whether it’s health practitioners, grocery store clerks or delivery drivers, an estimated 2.7 billion front-line essential workers keep our world working. And while they may not have a choice in work location, there are other areas of flexibility that companies can explore to provide more autonomy in their work experiences—through the tools they use, decisions they make, benefits they select and schedules they keep.

It’s also an opportunity to take a more nuanced look at the roles and tasks which may offer greater flexibility when you apply an omni-connection lens. In one example, lab workers were expected to work fully onsite. Yet after analyzing their different responsibilities, they found that certain tasks—like recording lab notes or writing research grants—could be done productively outside the lab.