Corona fatigue? - Key awareness points and tips to ensure well-being
More restrictions, extensions and frustration. The coronavirus has fundamentally changed our everyday and working lives. Coronavirus fatigue is now widespread in both our personal lives and workplaces.
While some studies suggest that in the spring of 2020 there was less stress and higher engagement in workplaces due to the unique situation that arose with the lockdown on March 11, we now see a different picture that points to a negative impact on well-being. The pandemic and its many consequences have now turned into a long-term and far-reaching change process that affects both the well-being and task performance of managers and employees.
In this article, you'll learn what to look out for in your employees and tips on how to support them and boost wellbeing during this time.
Caregiver was suspended
In the current situation, as a manager or health and safety representative, you play a key role in ensuring the mental well-being and psychological work environment in your organization.
Common to both communities of colleagues is that with the pandemic as a catalyst, we must find a new way of going to work - both in the hopefully shorter term, but probably also in the long term, where we will experience a more blended workday with more remote collaboration and restrictions in contact with each other.
Until we reach the point where this everyday life becomes "the new normal", it reinforces the need for both managers and health and safety representatives to ensure that they have a sense of what the individual employee and the community of colleagues need to thrive and perform.
Many employees ask themselves "is what I'm doing good enough", "are others achieving more than me?" or "am I living up to expectations?". In doing so, they risk ending up with a "double workload", i.e. in addition to performing their actual work tasks, they also have to spend energy figuring out if they're doing it well enough, and in the worst case scenario, they keep up appearances and pretend to be involved, while inside they may be insecure, frustrated or confused.
As a manager or health and safety representative, you are in a vulnerable position as you have to respond to employees' fears, frustrations or concerns. This situation places demands on you. Here are four focus points to help you focus on the psychological work environment.
Risks of coworker communities showing up to work:
- Infection fears and prevention behaviors can be divisive
- Negative actions against and stigmatization of infected colleagues
- Exhaustion, stress and indifference due to prolonged change and unpredictability in workflows
- Drowning in operations and urgent tasks
- Corona fatigue: Becoming less motivated to follow guidelines
Risks of repatriated colleagues:
- Digital remote work, which relies on collaborating with colleagues via phone, email and various digital services remotely, can be more emotionally exhausting than similar face-to-face collaboration.
- Unforeseen task challenges over long periods of time can lead to emotional exhaustion
- Loss of a sense of belonging, cohesion and being part of a team
- Increased borderlessness between personal and professional life
Balance your leadership
We all react differently and have different needs. Both in terms of how we feel about the situation, whether we are able to stay motivated and engaged, whether we feel that our expectations are aligned or whether we have a good connection with our colleagues.
Research from the spring of 2020 (Kaiser (2020) Leading in a Global Crisis: The Elevated Importance of Versatility), suggests that leaders who are able to adjust their leadership(leading versatile) according to what the current situation calls for coped better with the crisis than leaders who use a more unilateral leadership style.
- Therefore, focus on the "both/and" in your behavior and thinking: some employees need direction, while others need more support.
- Right now, you may need to turn up/down something that normally works: At times, the situation calls for you to think operationally and get down to business operations, while in other situations you need to set direction and clarify strategy and vision.
Empathy and understanding
Experience from the spring lock-down indicates that the ability to show empathy and clarity makes it easier to follow the decisions that are made (Sergent, K. & Stajkovic, A (2020). Precisely because you, as a manager or health and safety representative, will often find yourself in situations where you or your employees and colleagues need to talk about their well-being and task performance, you must make sure to stop and reflect before entering into dialogues. Take your time and consider:
- Am I open to seeing things from multiple perspectives?
- Am I balanced between pressure to act and reflection?
- Am I genuinely curious?
- Do I have the time and patience to do the job properly?
In addition, focus on your positive and negative capabilities:
What you do:
- Setting goals, making decisions, acting, motivating, observing, controlling, changing and implementing
and what you don't:
- The ability to endure and remain in doubt or not knowing what the right thing to do is
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Strengthen the colleague community and distribute decisions
Being part of a community of colleagues around a task is a protective factor. Feeling part of a team or community directly contributes to the prevention of mental wellbeing, which is why it's crucial that you focus on strengthening the community at the moment. However, both those coming into work and those who have been sent home are facing challenges brought on by the COVID-19 restrictions. However, there are some tips on how to strengthen your coworker community.
You who show up:
- Turn up the inclusivity and make room to react differently
- Pay attention to each other and ask: "How are you?"
- Decide to adhere to your internal guidelines without challenging or discussing them. Discuss and respect each other's boundaries
Those of you who have been laid off:
- Strengthen social support: Discuss wellbeing and ask how things are going. Create structures for professional sparring - e.g. schedule meetings between small groups of colleagues who can give each other feedback on tasks (and drink a virtual cup of coffee at the same time)
- Strengthen relationships: People have different social needs, but the group needs to prioritize it - e.g. shared social meetings virtually, walks with phone calls
- Recognize effort: Even if tasks are done differently than before - share creative solutions with each other and maintain your psychological safety by learning from "mistakes and hiccups".
- Talk honestly with each other and practice having a dialog about wellbeing - so you don't have to double up and "pretend" you've got it all figured out on your own... not many people do.
