How to support employees through the ever-shifting environment brought about by COVID-19
If there’s one thing that we do know about the pandemic, it’s that what we think we know is constantly changing. From health and remote working to vaccines and new variants, the outlook as we know it is continually evolving, and our working environment is changing in kind. When it comes to leadership during COVID-19, only one thing is certain: businesses must provide support to their employees, no matter the situational outlook.
But how can employers provide solid support when guidelines are changing so often? Is agility enough to deliver everything that workers need during these times? Can leaders ensure their team is following advice, serving the business and being productive simultaneously? Here, we’ll begin to answer these questions.
The first thing to note is that there are two essential layers when it comes to supporting and enabling your team members throughout the changes during the pandemic:
Business-led employee support — their role, responsibilities and work
Human-led wellbeing support — their mental, physical and emotional health
From a business perspective, many may consider business-led support more critical than looking out for worker wellbeing, but the two go hand in hand. Positive wellbeing encourages a positive work ethic, and so a double-pronged approach is needed to align the two and ensure that, above all, workers have precisely what they need to perform at optimum levels. Join us as we lay out our advice for each section below.
Business-led employee support
Role, responsibilities and work environment
To cancel the office party or not to cancel the office party, that is the question. Providing definitive guidance within the business is paramount at times like this, so leaders must devise a plan to a) define certainty and apply it to everyone, and b) share the information and implement the measures effectively.
It is understandable why businesses may choose to cancel plans during the pandemic, but it is also imperative that there is clear communication. Businesses simply cannot cancel the employee Christmas party, for example, and then have word spreading of a late December Senior Executives’ all-expenses-paid steak dinner. If you aren’t already doing so, start by liaising with HR to reach realistic conclusions, regulations and advice with the whole company in mind. They will be able to provide insight into what is reasonably achievable across all departments and how implementable and adaptable strategies are, enabling leaders and employers to meet employees halfway.
Before lockdown, 57.3% of managers believed that employees needed to be physically present in the workplace to progress, but this decreased to 37.5% of managers since lockdown in one study: ride this curve and trust in your team. If like many other businesses, you are reverting between working in the workplace when you can and then also working from home when advised by the government, it’s crucial to develop your leadership skills for the remote working environment and ensure employee engagement remains high. Consider also the impact of working from home on younger professionals and devise strategies that help shape their careers for the better while being on and off remote.
Company-wide and above all, be clear and be consistent with the kind of business-led support you are offering. As it stands, we are in what is being called ‘The Great Resignation’ where “69% of workers are ready to move jobs,” so leaders need to be doing their utmost to advise, engage and support their teams effectively. Supporting team members during these ever-shifting years of their careers will be critical for employee retention.
Human-led wellbeing support
Mental, physical and emotional health
One piece of advice that hasn’t changed since the start of the pandemic is this: stay safe. The guidance around it has however changed, altering the perspective of what ‘safe’ actually means at a given time. Safe has meant working from home where possible, getting vaccinated, introducing tighter restrictions around Christmas and much more. Leaders must keep employees’ best interests at heart, guiding them in the right direction for the business and as a person during each of these waves.
The key to good leadership during the pandemic is not putting employees in a position where they are missing important details or become unsure about which guidance to follow. While it’s proving difficult to align business policies with government policies as they are changing so often, open your door to your team’s opinions and wishes at this time. Where possible, align everyone with the problem at hand, encouraging them to work together with you as their leader to achieve success and keep the company seeing success despite the trying times. Engage workers in the solution overall while creating a space for them to communicate the details of their own unique situation. Hundreds of thousands of professionals have proved that they can work remotely effectively over the last few years, and teams deserve credit for supporting the business’s mission.
Employee work-life balance and wellbeing has always been a challenge, but the pandemic has made it even more unpredictable. Some good news is that 55.7% of managers reported that their organisations provided guidance for wellbeing since lockdown, but overall most felt they needed more support and guidance from their organisations on how to manage these issues. This is another situation where reaching out for HR support could be highly beneficial: if this is the case at your organisation, be proactive and vocal about advocacy for employee wellbeing.
The future of leadership requires empathy and flexibility as well as a business mindset. Showing trust, encouraging open dialogue and implementing wellbeing policies and processes will help each team member to feel supported as a human as well as an employee. Enable team members to do what they need to do to take care of their physical health, and their emotional and mental health is, in turn, protected.
It’s understandable that employees may be feeling nervous or overwhelmed — and as their leader, it’s only natural that you are feeling this too. Things will never be exactly the same as they were before, but what’s important now is how businesses think about and respond in kind to best support their workers through the challenges of this unusual transitional period.
If you do not have an HR department to help devise support strategies or would just prefer an alternative and expert view, consider bringing in a third-party consultancy to assist. Here at Gingko, we partner with businesses, large and small, to bridge the gap between business goals and the people driving your business forward. We believe in the power of people and make your goals our own.
