Why a “sur-thrival” mindset is so critical for companies

Earlier this year, Plus hosted its first-ever virtual Kick Off meeting. It was nothing new to hold a Kick Off — it’s an annual tradition at Plus, our way of bringing employees together and getting them focused on the same goals to start the year — but it was a different experience running the event through Zoom.

Rather than lamenting the fact that we couldn’t gather in person, we instead tried to make the most out of the unique circumstances. In fact, the theme of our 2021 Kick Off was “sur-thrival.” We decided that getting through 2020 and building for the years ahead was about much more than just survival — it was about thriving in the face of adversity. Hence, sur-thrival.

This mindset has served us well, and it’s helping other organizations, too. A recent report from Deloitte specifically highlights the shift from surviving to thriving. In their research, they found that “the organizations best prepared for the global health, financial, and social equity crises of 2020 were already operating under a ‘future-oriented thrive’ mindset and treating disruption as opportunity.”

This same idea can easily be applied to mobility teams. I recently wrote about being “future ready,” and part of this process is about adopting a mindset that embraces challenges and change. Our industry has certainly endured plenty of both in the past year, and I’d wager that the teams handling these obstacles the best are the ones that have a “future-oriented thrive” — or, in our case, sur-thrival — mindset.

The good news is you can build this type of mindset within your program if you feel it’s lacking today. The article below identifies “five shifts that … establish and cultivate a thrive mindset.” They are:

1. Integrate physical, mental, financial, and social health into the design of work itself rather than addressing well-being with adjacent programs.
2. Give people personal agency and choice to encourage engagement and impact.
3. Weave automation and technology more naturally into the way people work.
4. Use data to develop and act on insights that help people achieve their potential.
5. Shift HR’s role from standardizing and enforcing workforce policies to re-architecting work across the enterprise.

I encourage you to read the article for more on each of these five ideas. Looking at the list, are there areas where you can see mobility playing a key role? What shifts can we make to push our organizations more toward a sur-thrival mentality?