Staying Calm during COVID

A friend of mine this week received a package from her head office. As a company they are a multinational with around 50% of staff permanently home working. 

The package contained a branded cup featuring safety advice, some sterilising wipes for hand and computer hygiene and chocolate for...well, I guess for when it just all feels too much.

The message intention was, regardless of where you work we want you to stay safe, we’re thinking of you. The intention is for employees to remember to adopt safe working practice whether at home, or in the office. 

Creating behaviour change that is consistent and cohesive amongst your team can help to create harmony, reduce conflict and bring about a sense of ‘we’re all in this together’.

If you’re managing a team, then asking for sustained behavioural change needs to be not only delivered decisively but managed consistently, and perhaps most importantly - led by example

Difficulties can arise when...

The way in which companies are managing the new ways of working can polarise opinion 

We’ve seen examples of companies who use punitive methods and threats which have a (not surprisingly) negative effect on their employees’ wellbeing and productivity.

Our heightened anxiety levels mean keeping calm and carrying on isn’t an option. We need to take a moment to breathe (and find calm), take a pause and ask ourselves what we and our teams really need right now? This article gives a great breakdown of how our brain and body respond to the coronavirus quarantine.

Companies, good companies, want their employees to feel safe and valued. We’re all continuing to, or are returning to work during a hugely stressful event. 

Using a 5 minute check-in with your team members is invaluable. Using this method, I listened to one colleague describe her frustration with another colleague’s constant and repeating questions.

After allowing her space to air her...

As people are making plans for how our professional lives will look going forward, we have been fielding a huge number of enquiries about how you can help your teams - and yourself, in this next phase of management through the COVID crisis.

We’ve been delivering webinars for various organisations on ‘How to stay mentally fit through the COVID crisis’ and also ‘How to manage your stress and anxiety through the COVID crisis’ which have helped managers and their teams to address simple changes they can make to stay mentally healthy at the moment.

We’ve also  been working on a variety of free tools and resources you can access for guidance and reassurance. This includes our free webinar series for managers “how to support your team through the COVID crisis".

Workplace resilience now requires a new perspective, both for how you manage and communicate with your teams, but also, how you manage your own stress and limitations in this new era.

Thanks to video conferencing we now know much more about our colleagues' lives (how their stress levels have been raised by constant interruptions from kids; how their cat looks like 80's TV character Alf; that they own an industrial grade coffee machine hence why they are SO alert).

Some people have even been introduced to their colleagues somewhat quirky partners whether they wanted to or not - anyone fancy a superhero bombing your Zooms?

We have a great opportunity now, to convert that knowledge into more empathic interactions as we transition to the re-entry phase. 

That better understanding of what happens in our colleagues lives can make us more patient, ask better questions and show greater understanding when we’re faced with an unexpected reaction to a circumstance.

We will ALL at some point in these next few weeks, behave in a way we don’t expect. 

The 5 minute team check-in video Rachel created a few weeks ago has received a great response...

The easing of the lockdown measures is starting to divide option almost as forcefully as Brexit.

It's understandable that we have such polarising opinions when people are so vastly and differently impacted. Each of us has overlapping concerns about the current status and the future potential.

There's the colleague with a newborn, the one with parents in a care home, the one who is suddenly a single parent and needs to pay for unexpected bills, the one with an autistic teenager who desperately needs social contact.

Whilst we can debate, and listen and contest, what we really must do, especially in our professional capacity - is show compassion.

We don't know the background to everyone's story, and each person's story is driving their fear. We don't have to agree with their sentiment, heck - we don't even have to give it air, but as this article explains, without compassion we might break the bonds we so very much need with our co-workers.