Getting through this tough time has been hard on us all. Are your staff balanced on a knife-edge

We are living in unprecedented times. We are living in times so unforeseen, in fact, that they make the aforementioned phrase seem overused. More than a year has passed since we first entered lockdown in England. And after more than a year of intense pressure and working through a pandemic, the working population is feeling the strain.

Staff everywhere are breaking under the overwhelming pressure of a workload too heavy, a service slower than usual, hardly any access to certain points of the supply chain –  and now we are working with Brexit paperwork, too.

If all that isn’t enough to give you a headache, you probably haven’t been paying enough attention to the needs of your staff.

Staff are at Breaking Point

Without a single word of exaggeration, it is true to say that the workforce is at an all-time low[i]. As many as a million people have entered unemployment in the last twelve months. The ones that remain in work are either furloughed, or shouldering the burden of a greater workload due to everyone else being furloughed.

There is no happy medium here. Those of us that are working are at the end of our endurance. The medical staff, NHS, job center employees and supermarket workers. Even then non-essential employees currently working from home are stretched. It’s hard to rely on an internet connection that gets patchy at peak times. It’s hard to work from your home laptop when it isn’t equipped for the software you need to properly do your job.

In terms of frustration, employees across Europe are at their wits’ end.

What can we do to help employees through Covid-19?

As the people in charge of all of this, employers need to start taking back control of the situation. Of course, there’s nothing they can do about the virus – but there are steps that can be taken to make the working environment easier for us all.

Consider some of the following actions to take in your own management style and workplace, which could positively benefit employees and thereby lead to a reduction in sick pay bills on your end.

The 5 Best Ways to Help staff Through Lockdown Blues

Here are the top five ways to help your staff overcome the troubles of lockdown. After all, if you can help them through these tough times, you will likely have their loyalty for life.

1 – Consider Training

This is the ideal time to re-train staff, particularly with an angle towards the well-being factors of their job. Hays Learning has some excellent training options for employees feeling the strain, but there are others out there. Free courses, group, and team-building exercises, and weekly training games, can all help to both instill a new office culture, but also to pick up staff morale.

2 – Switch to Results-Focused Workloads

If you are used to having complete control over office processes, it’s time to let go. That feeling of wanting to know who is doing how much work? That is no longer conducive to a healthy work/life balance for your employees. Give them a task and a deadline, then let them work their own hours to achieve it. This is a healthier approach for all involved.

3 – Keep Checking In

Face time is important. It’s not a time where you allocate a half-hour a week to nag your employee into working harder, either. This is a half-hour scheduled with each team or person working remotely. There are multiple benefits to this, including less isolation for remote workers, a better relationship with your staff, and a newly created online office culture that cultivates trust[ii].

Creating group chats or managing your employees through cloud messaging services, allows you to keep in touch without triggering the anxiety caused by a phone call from the boss. WhatsApp is increasing in value to businesses due to the privacy of its chatrooms.

4 – Encourage time Away from Screens

If you have those few employees who are overly committed to their tasks, remind them of two things. The first: that they need to get up, stretch, and maybe go outside, at least once a day. Second: make sure they are opening their curtains and windows, getting plenty of natural light and fresh air. If they aren’t? Suggest a daylight lamp. They can get really inexpensive ones on Amazon.

5 – Social Media Interactions are Important

In the past, encouraging staff to interact with your firm on social media has been a fairly straightforward marketing technique. If you haven’t yet, then this should be encouraged now more than ever.

That’s not the only thing we can use social media for, though. We can use it to create employee groups, share team-building events, and even play browser games with each other to keep our minds sharp. Basic human interaction is at a minimum right now. Limiting the amount of time our staff members spend isolated from one another could be a great way to solidify team bonds and encourage future growth.

Getting through this Together

One of the few good points to have come from the pandemic is the closeness we will share with those that we have made it through this tough time alongside. If we can keep our employees with us, put their needs first, and be sure to take care of them right now – we will have their loyalty for life.

Even if they leave your firm and move on, they will tell people stories about how well you took care of them during the most turbulent time of many of their lives. Support them, listen to them, provide grief counseling for those that need it, and go the extra mile. If we can do these few small things now, we are securing the future of our businesses when all of this is over. And if it doesn’t end? Then we have created an excellent benchmark for creating an online office culture, as we move forward…together.

[i]     https://www.forbes.com/sites/anitasands/2020/09/16/employees-are-at-a-breaking-point-heres-what-managers-should-be-doing-to-help/

[ii]    https://www.twinfm.com/article/5-ways-employers-can-help-their-staff-during-the-national-lockdown