Facing your pandemic legacies

A reflection on Employee Welfare & Engagement during the Covid-19 pandemic

As we start to emerge from this long and wearisome pandemic, many employers and leaders will be confronted with questions from employees, prospective employees, funders, regulating bodies, partners and even employment tribunals about what they have done to mitigate the hazardous effects of the pandemic on employee welfare and engagement.

In a world of lockdowns, masks, homeschooling and social distancing, how have you shown care and interest in the wellbeing and engagement of your employees? Just to be very clear, proactively supporting the welfare and engagement of your staff is much more than quoting an Employee Assistance Programme and/or putting people on furlough.

When reflecting on how well you have shown up during this brutal pandemic, let’s remind ourselves of just a few of the common experiences shared by so many employees.

Excessive working hours

It has not been unusual for employees working from home to put in excessive hours.  Whilst each of us has personal accountability for managing our own time, there is also a responsibility and a legal duty of care on the part of the employer to proactively support employees with sensible and healthy working hours.  How have you protected your staff from working excessive hours and helped them to maintain a sensible work/life balance during this pandemic?

Homeschooling 

Many of us are acutely aware of the challenges with home-schooling and working.  For many parents, this has involved several hours during the day with their children followed by an evening of work for their employer. How have you taken care of employees in this situation?  Have you expected them to do the same level of work that would usually be required and only explored their welfare if they’ve raised it as an issue or have you proactively engaged with these team members to adjust their workloads and deadlines so as to accommodate these particular set of circumstances?

Loneliness

There are some of us who live alone and have not had much or any in-person contact with friends or family.  Thank goodness for the technology that keeps us connected but having in-person contact removed for long

periods of time can lead to significant low mood and depression.  How have you factored this into your wellbeing offer? Has your main response been to offer access to an Employee Assistance Programme or has it included something more creative and tailored to your teams?

In addition to these, the pandemic has also strained relationships, trapped people at home with abusive partners/family members, as well as exacerbated loss and grief.

In short, the last 12 months have been overwhelming for many of us and in different ways, and as we begin to start our journey out of this pandemic employers will be confronted with their pandemic legacies in terms of employee welfare and engagement.  Indeed, it won’t be unlikely for prospective employees to ask at their interview how you looked after your employees during the pandemic and how you kept them engaged.

When reviewing your welfare and engagement approach, there are a few key areas to consider:

1. Awareness – Being tuned into your employees so you can quickly identify tell-tale signs of disengagement, burn-out and poor health.
2. Proactivity – Just as employers expect their teams to be proactive in their job role, so do teams expect their leaders to be proactive in their care for and engagement of staff.  Impactful leadership cannot rely on the unsophisticated and lazy approach of,  ‘my staff know where I am if they want to raise an issue or discuss a concern‘.  Whilst the “open door” philosophy is a fundamental basic, it is not enough as a contemporary approach to employee welfare and engagement. Leaders are required to notice more and proactively, consciously and very deliberately create safe and engaging environments for their teams.
3. Collaborative Creation – Gone are the days when a small number of senior colleagues [who are usually not diverse enough to represent the perspectives and lived experiences of their employees], will create and launch meaningful wellbeing and engagement plans.  A successful approach to wellbeing and engagement is done collaboratively with a diverse and broad range of stakeholders and partners, not least with those who will mostly be impacted by policy decisions.
4. Curiosity – Even the most seasoned of leaders cannot rely on their past experiences to suitably respond to the challenges posed by this unprecedented pandemic.  Successful leaders need a strong will to learn, an enthusiasm to ask questions rather than provide answers, and most certainly the ability to listen and challenge their own perceptions.
5. Integrity – Leadership cannot be an exploitation of power and influence. Instead, it needs humility and empathy.

If you would like to explore your approach to employee wellbeing and engagement, Integrity HR is a consultancy that can help you with this. Integrity HR specialises in working with leaders from a broad range of sectors to review and enhance their wellbeing and employee engagement approach.  Based on 16 years of HR expertise, Integrity HR offers insights and guidance based on contemporary and modern thinkers/contributors.  Message us directly through LinkedIn to explore how we might support your welfare and engagement efforts.  This could include:

• Reviewing existing policies and/or procedures
• Designing new policies and procedures
• Consulting on culture design
• Designing and facilitating workshops on employee welfare and engagement
• Guiding and supporting through conflict resolution

Integrity HR, putting ethics and best practice at the heart of HR

 

My name is Uthman (Osman) Yilmaz, the founder and CEO of Integrity HR. I started Integrity HR to offer the very best of modern and contemporary HR perspectives that are grounded in ethics and best practice. I have worked in HR for more than 16 years, starting my career as an HR Officer. Since then, I have worked as an HR Advisor, Consultant, Business Partner, Senior Business Partner and Head of HR. This experience has been gained from a varied and diverse range of sectors to include Energy, Retail, Culture, Technology, Charity, Housing and Media. I am hugely passionate about supporting employers to create working cultures that are welcoming to all and where inclusion is for everyone. In addition, I am excited about enabling leadership styles that facilitate high performing teams that are healthy, engaged and motivated.

Connect with Uthman on LinkedIn