Now that we’re in the summer months, it seems like leaders and managers spend an insane amount of time juggling the planning of retreats, meetings, and work…with employee PTO days. Moving responsibilities around, making sure everything is covered, and coming up with contingency plans takes a lot of time, patience, and coordination.
💡If you want to learn some fun facts such as the amount of PTO that goes unused or the “staycation” trend - check this out.
Every company has PTO policies - but less have good ways for integrating people back in after PTO.
Whether it’s for maternity leave, a sabbatical, or a long vacation, it can be super taxing for the person returning, especially in our fast-paced digital world where rapid change and pivots are the new normal. Getting up to speed quickly and with the right information can be a struggle since there are:
✉️ Endless emails to sift through
🔔Notifications oozing out of Slack or Teams
💬Too many conversations to catch up on
✔️Need-to-know changes that have happened
And as highlighted in this previous Latch Unlock - most emails and notifications go unread, are only one-dimensional, easy to delete, and fail to tell the real story. As far as going back and watching Zoom recordings of old meetings → does anyone really do that?! 😂
🔓 This Week’s Latch Unlock: Less overload = faster reintegration
Recently one of SHIFT’s Principal Consultants, Whitney Siders, came back after 3+ months out on maternity leave. This is what she said about how Latch helped her reintegrate into work in a way that didn’t make her head spin: "I welcomed a baby boy in December! As my return to work drew closer, I was anxiously wondering how my inbox would look and how I’d catch up quickly – not just on the work, but with my teammates and what had been going on across the business the last few months. 
Since 'Live by Design' is one of our SHIFT values, the only communication I received from the team while out were things about the baby, questions about how I was doing, and words of encouragement. I had no idea what had 'been going on at SHIFT' while I was out as my world had grown in monumental ways with a ton of focus on learning this new role, mother.
In any business, there's a lot of information to digest and prioritize week to week, so being completely removed for 3+ months, I anticipated getting back up to speed would feel like rowing upstream against the wind.
This was not my experience at all.
Here’s why → I was able to watch the weekly videos which gave me clarity on: where to focus, what I needed to follow-up on, and who I needed to connect with. I went back and read through the comments on each video which was helpful because I could feel the tone as if I were there…and it was fun to see where the team had been over the last 3 months.
Having access to Latch was a huge unlock for me as it saved me a significant amount of time and allowed me to reintegrate without feeling like I was missing out or starting from a deficit. Instead of overwhelmed and overloaded, I returned able to be fully present, clear-headed, and excited to get back into what I love doing."We’re grateful to have Whitney back and even more excited to have this new SHIFTer as part of our team!
That’s what we call a Latch Unlock.
BTW: We are always asking for feedback on what people love and don’t love about Latch. Recently, we surveyed 100 users to find out what they found most valuable. Below is a summary of what they said - it might give you some ideas for your next launch! 
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