Looking after employees wellbeing in the current Covid-19 environment should be a priority. A recent survey showed that the number of respondents choosing anger as one of their top emotions had more than doubled since March — rising from 20% then to 45% in September.
It is quite feasible that isolated employees, especially if they are not working, will experience such feelings. How should an employer react?
It is inevitable that there will be some impact on employers This could be a long-term effect. Employees may even experience mental ill health. We have some suggestions for calm.
Look after yourself. There are numerous ways in which you can do this and avoid negative impacts on others. This Harvard Business Review article which referred to the survey provides some good tips.
Encourage socialising. Employees on furlough cannot do any work for you but they can keep in contact with each other via conferencing, social media or telephone. If you can facilitate this via company facilities this may be invaluable. You need to be careful though, because if HMRC get a whiff that employees have been working for you (via a disgruntled employee for example) they may allege fraud. Do not disclose personal data (e.g. personal phone numbers) without explicit permission, of course.
Encourage anxiety-reducing activities – mindfulness, Tai Chi, physical exercises. As an employer you may be able to offer these online in such a way that everyone participates at a designated time. It may be possible to partner with a local gym to facilitate this. Whether HMRC would sanction such time as being non-work (if you organise it) is doubtful but there may be an argument, nonetheless.
Keep employees informed as to what is going on. If some activities are continuing, share what is happening. I’d argue that one-way communication is not asking employees to work – any more than any news broadcaster is doing. In particular your information may do more to reduce stress than most news broadcasters.
Remember serenity comes from accepting things that we cannot change and from living in the now. Good reading is Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now or Viktor Frankle: Man’s search for meaning.
Both Frankle and Tolle can help bring calm to the Covid storm.
Malcolm Martin FCIPD
Author Human Resource Practice
Blogs are for general guidance and are not an authoritative statement of the law.