If you think the impact of COVID-19 on employees will abate once new infections slow down, think again. We can right-size our businesses, we can give people protective gear or have them work from home, but the toll on mental health will be here for a while.
As the world, including the work world, has entirely shifted under our feet in the last month, the speed of the disruption and uncertainty created by the pandemic has moved business leaders into overdrive to lay the groundwork for strategies to help their people manage through the next phase with their jobs, their health, and their sanity intact.
Business leaders are rightly hyper-focused on the importance of helping keep people physically healthy right now: from supporting social distancing with the technology needed to work productively from home, to new hygiene standards for essential workers and workplaces, to introducing COVID-19 responsive sick and family leave policies.
But an issue of singular importance for the sustained success of people throughout this crisis and beyond: maintaining mental health.
Healthy employees will be the essential strategy for survival
Responsive organizations know that they are fundamentally dependent on the agility, adaptive capacity, and emotional wellbeing of their people – this requires people to stay healthy emotionally and physically.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought this need into sharper focus due to the uncertainty and multi-pronged threat it has created; we already knew we needed workers to learn and extend themselves in new ways while staying focused and collaborative. Now the need is even more urgent. This is a textbook situation for causing burnout, which occurs when the demands placed on someone exceed the resources they have available to deal with them. Less than a year ago the WHO named burnout a workplace syndrome which costs $125 billion per year. Workforce emotional wellbeing and behavioral health were already priority challenges prior to the pandemic.
Burnout protection is critical protection
In today’s environment it will be critical for leaders and managers to mitigate the potential for employees to suffer emotional distress and burnout by providing access to the resources and cognitive skills essential for handling an unprecedented stress load. As a leader it is important to understand that some segments of your workforce will have default reactions to stress that put them at increased risk for burnout. People on your teams with high levels of empathy and an emotionally-charged first reaction to a situation have the highest percentage risk for burnout at 36%, including many frontline workers. Another group at high risk are those innovators we count on in times like these to forge ahead regardless of risk. Without work-life balance and stress management skills 25% of these strategically critical employees are at high risk for burnout.
The pandemic has caused us to have to view our employees in the most human, and holistic, way to respond to this most human crisis. Just as it has accelerated technological changes in the way we work and the way companies intersect with their people (called “the future of work”) it will accelerate a data-driven integrated total employee mental health strategy. Planning for the post pandemic new reality will be a challenge, and opportunity, for all of us. Just as the pandemic has forced the rapid adoption of remote working technology it is forcing us to reckon with a total employee experience strategy that integrates behavioral and physical health along with other skill and talent management areas.
