By Marie-Reine Pugh • April 10, 2020
Life certainly took an
alarming turn in March. First came toilet paper-hoarding, then toilet
paper-hoarding memes, and then real worries about food and medical mask
shortages, followed by lockdowns worldwide and stay-at-home orders for
95 percent of Americans. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses
closed their doors, leading to a dramatic increase in the national unemployment
rate—”the largest over-the-month increase in the rate since January 1975,”
according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and
Statistics.
For businesses still
operating, there’s plenty of workplace stress due to COVID-19, from adapting to
new working arrangements, having the kids home, employees getting sick, and
much more. Because many employees are experiencing stressors unlike any they’ve
had to face before, they’ll need their human resources representatives to help
them through both the obvious and less obvious challenges.
The world feels crazy
right now, but here are a few ways HR can help employees manage workplace
stress during COVID-19.
How to Help Employees Deal with
COVID-19 Stress
What can organizations do to help
reduce employee stress due to COVID-19?
Everyone is feeling
the strain of having to adjust to this new, uncertain reality in a way that
goes beyond job stress. In an interview with Harvard Business
Review, grief expert David Kessler explained that “we’re feeling a
number of different griefs….The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll;
the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We
are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”
Kessler goes on to
name another type of grief, anticipatory grief, which focuses on the
uncertainty of the future and shatters our sense of safety. So even if nobody
in your organization is sick and you haven’t let any employees go, your
employees probably worry about that possibility. Or maybe they’re a manager,
and they’re worrying about having to be the bearer of bad news if the time
comes, or of being fired themselves. There’s also the very real and tragic
grief of losing a loved one to this virus.
What HR Can Do
The number one thing
you can do to help your employees manage stress during COVID-19 is communicate.
Communicate so they know what their options are and that they do have options.
Making sure your employees know who to contact when they have questions about
benefits, time-off policies, working from home, or other assistance programs
you offer will be key in reducing overall workplace anxiety and COVID-19-related
job stress. While your job in HR has always been to take care of employee
well-being, employees might not have recognized you in this role––so tell them.
Open up the lines of
communication. In practical terms, your COVID-19 stress management plan might
need to include some sort of information campaign using email, newsletters, an
internal web page, or company announcements dedicated
to answering COVID-related questions.
To specifically
address the issue of grief and emotional well-being, your organization’s
communications about COVID-19 stress management need to include resources on
employee self-care. Remind your employees to take advantage of their health
care benefits, particularly with regards to mental health. If you have an Employee Assistant Program
(EAP), make sure everyone knows how to access it. EAPs are free for
employees and anonymous, alleviating the financial stress and social stigma
that can be associated with seeking mental health counseling.
If your organization
is having to let employees go, you can find more specific advice in this article.
What are specific challenges that may
cause employees stress when working from home?
Normally, working from
home offers many benefits, from
increased productivity to better work-life balance. But this situation isn’t
normal. Many businesses have had to transition practically overnight to a fully
remote workforce (BambooHR is in this camp), meaning that it’s not just a few
people here and there calling in to meetings. It’s everyone having to figure
out how to communicate and work together in this new arrangement––and an even
heavier load on those who support them, such as IT and HR professionals.
Additionally, many
employees are working from home with spouses, partners, roommates, or kids in
the same space. It’s not just that people have traded a busy office for a busy
home environment. Employees face an unprecedented maelstrom of pressures on top
of social distancing: homeschooling, limited privacy, and concerns over friends
and relatives’ health combine with unique workplace urgency for a devastating
effect.
Employees just aren’t
going to be able to separate their personal lives from their work, increasing the likelihood of burnout. To combat this,
your organization will need to issue clear directives about respecting when
employees are on or off the clock (whether that’s literally, in the case of
hourly and non-exempt workers, or figuratively, in the case of salaried and
exempt workers).
What HR Can Do
Along with giving your
employees tips for adjusting to remote work, educate managers
on best practices for dealing with
remote employees, so they’re better able to mentor and support their
teams. More generally, to keep remote employees engaged and
emotionally healthy, communicate standards for staying in touch during the
workday, retaining or rebuilding team culture, and keeping long-term objectives
rather than hourly output in mind.
As Suzanne Lucas,
better known as the Evil HR Lady, recently explained,
we should never measure productivity by presence, and we definitely can’t
expect that right now from employees. “Don’t waste management time auditing
every keystroke to make sure people are sitting in front of their computers,”
she counsels, adding, “I guarantee you’ll be able to tell if people are
slacking by looking at the outcome of their work versus the hours put into
doing it.”
What are the specific challenges for
employees who have to work onsite?
What if your employees
perform jobs that put them in contact with the public? Healthcare workers are
the most vulnerable and most essential during this time, facing unimaginable risks and stress
at the front lines of the pandemic. However, workers in other
industries––e.g., food retail, sanitation, construction, delivery services––are
also at risk of exposure, and while they may have less contact with the virus,
they also likely don’t have any training or experience in dealing with an
outbreak situation, which may leave them feeling helpless or trapped between
personal safety and financial obligation.
These workers have to
worry about getting infected by someone at work, protecting their family from
illness when they come home, working with the public at a time of high panic
and stress, and more. Meanwhile, they have all the same personal challenges as
the remote employees we discussed in the previous section: respecting social distancing,
caring for children home from schools, worrying about loved ones getting sick,
etc. Their stress can’t be ignored.
What HR Can Do
Workplace safety has
to be your top priority. In the case of hospitals, that responsibility may fall
to administrative staff who oversee safety as part of their broader role. But
outside of medical facilities, safety is often the responsibility of HR.
That means ensuring
employees wash their hands and have access to basic hygiene supplies, like hand
sanitizer or soap and warm water. You’ll need to enforce regular disinfection
of high-touch areas and ensure managers are communicating proper behavior to
every team member. All of these recommendations come from the Center for
Disease Control’s (CDC) COVID-19 guidance to businesses. You can find more
detail on their website.
The CDC has also
recommended that people wear masks in
public. These can be cloth or homemade masks. While organizations (other than
hospitals) are under no obligation to provide such masks, you should allow
employees to wear them, especially if they are at high risk of contagion due to
age or health. If customers or clients express concerns about employees wearing
masks, direct them to the CDC’s guidelines for wearing masks and assure them
that this measure helps protect them, too.
What is the best way to help an
employee who has health concerns related to COVID-19?
COVID-19 is highly contagious,
and it’s very possible that some of your employees might get sick. This will
cause job-related stress even if employees only experience mild symptoms,
as current health guidelines recommend
that those infected separate themselves entirely from family, friends, and even
pets, and then remain in quarantine for seven days after their last symptom.
Family members who become ill may require constant care, meaning employees
might need to take time off to care for them and handle parenting tasks even if
they aren’t the ones who are sick.
In addition to these
worries, the heightened state of fear stigmatizes those who have
been infected as somehow morally at fault. This puts us all in
danger because, as professor Valeria Earnshaw explains, “stigma undermines
efforts at testing and treating disease. People who worry that they will be
socially shunned if they are sick are less likely to get tested for a disease
or seek treatment if they experience symptoms.”
What HR Can Do
Most importantly, tell
your employees to stay home if they don’t feel well or if they or someone they
live with exhibits any COVID-19 symptoms. If employees are worried about taking
time off, check to see if they qualify for the new policy recently put in place
by the U.S. government. Among other provisions, the Families First Coronavirus
Response Act (FFCRA) guarantees paid sick leave for employees
at small businesses with fewer than 500 employees.
If one of your
employees does test positive (or has symptoms), the CDC’s guidelines state
that “employers should inform fellow employees of their possible exposure to
COVID-19 in the workplace but maintain confidentiality as required by the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).” Making this policy known to your
employees will also help them feel more comfortable reporting exposure or
illness, thus making everyone safer.
If employees can still
work but need to self-isolate, consider being more flexible with allowing
remote work. This is assuming your organization hasn’t already moved everyone
to working from home or that the position can be done remotely, of course. But
take an objective look at your business before dismissing these requests.
Working from home helps employees adhere to social distancing recommendations
and worry less about exposure to the virus, thus alleviating COVID-19 job
stress. Allowing employees to work remotely can also show how your organization
values employee health more than preserving the status quo.
Focus on What You Can Do, Not What
You Can’t
Going back to
Kessler’s concept of anticipatory grief, much of the stress is compounded by
feeling helpless in the face of this pandemic. Health and government guidelines
shift and change with the developing crisis, employers try to adapt, and
employees can end up feeling caught in the middle. And while HR can’t fix every
problem, nor should you be expected to, your continued communication and
support will be invaluable to help your employees find their way through this
pandemic. If they feel like they have support for their job stress, they’ll
feel better equipped to face the rest of the crisis.
Marie-Reine Pugh is
copywriter at BambooHR. She researches and writes content for HR and anyone
else wanting to make a difference in the workplace.
No comments:
Post a Comment