Don't Just Look for the Helpers, Help Them: How You Can Utilize Your Skills to Help the Helpers

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news,” Mr. Rogers said to his television neighbors, “my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

While this advice was originally intended for children, it has become an oft-cited quote shared during times of crisis.

As Shanique Brown and I reflected on how we’ve felt over the last several weeks - often feeling helpless and disoriented, while doing our part to slow the spread by quarantining in our homes - we realized that rather than simply looking for the helpers, we should in fact be helping the helpers. 

This is particularly evident now, as we observe heroes in healthcare and other industries (who, by the way, didn’t sign up to be heroes, but are stepping up nonetheless) rise up to help battle COVID-19.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is a crisis unlike many of us have experienced before. 

The impact of the virus presents a grand challenge, or ‘wicked problem’, as some would say. A grand challenge is a significant and complex issue, often with a global impact, that is best solved with the help of individuals with diverse and broad-ranging expertise. 

COVID-19 is a grand challenge with impact in healthcare, across industries in the workplace, the educational system, the economy, and community activities. We - along with our families, friends, and colleagues - are grappling with tough circumstances (e.g., homeschooling children while working full-time; dealing with financial hardships due to job loss and lay-offs; caring for high-risk family members; combating feelings of loneliness and isolation). 

Along with these circumstances comes the pressure to make quick, often high impact, decisions - often without any prior experience or insight to fall back on; this ranges from deciding whether or not to continue working (for those who have a choice), identifying how best to cope with not being physically present with those who are ill, and facing the grim ethical dilemma of choosing how to allocate scarce resources to diagnose and treat those who are symptomatic.

In essence, COVID-19 has impacted all of our lives, both personally and professionally, in ways that we weren’t quite equipped to handle. 

As Industrial-Organizational Psychologists, our mission is to advance the science and practice of applying psychology to work in ways that enhance people’s work lives. As a result, we are particularly mindful of the ways in which COVID-19 has impacted people at work but also inclined to examine opportunities to repurpose work-related expertise to the most-pressing challenges at this time.

This piece is meant to bring attention to the wide-ranging issues related to COVID-19 and how expertise combining psychology and the world of work can be leveraged to help the helpers. We will also highlight the value of community-driven efforts, especially during stressful times, and speak to the explosive impact that becomes possible when different people, with different expertise, combine their efforts to solve a shared, and far-reaching, ‘wicked problem’ such as a global pandemic. 

Let's unpack the problem.

Within each industry impacted, resources have been directed or in many cases, redirected, in order to promote adaptation and pivot to meet new and emerging demands, maintain business continuity, and meet customer, employee, and human needs. In addition to these efforts, the reality is that this crisis is also traumatic in nature. It is, without a doubt, a human tragedy, first and foremost.

Still, there are several other salient pieces to this grand challenge, including, but not limited to:

• The need for quick, yet robust medical research to understand and combat the virus; 
• Data integration efforts in order stop the spread and trace contact for those infected; 
• Understanding organizational issues and needs related to working from home (WFH);
• Addressing educational issues related to remote learning at all levels; 
• Creating economic policies to support resilience across communities, cities, states, and at the federal level; 
• And gaining the support required to manage the virus’ impact on emotional and physical wellness.

The bottom line is that the issue we face is both immediate, multifaceted, and complex as well as far-reaching, with many long-term effects and repercussions that will need to be addressed for years to come. Many of which we haven’t quite anticipated or even begin to understand.

In the short term, immediate care is necessary for those impacted and support is critical for those at home. Healthcare providers, the heroes during this crisis, are bravely stepping into the frontlines to care for sick patients, often without the right personal protective equipment (PPE). Many are making the tough decisions to separate from their families in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and thus, are facing this crisis in isolation. 

As our healthcare providers care for us, we must ask: what of their needs? And, how can we - individually and collectively - rise up to meet these needs?

In addition to needs related to safety and protection, like many, our healthcare workers have childcare, eldercare, and other responsibilities at home. Given their current high demands of work-related caregiving duties, concerns about personal health and safety, and feelings of isolation, healthcare providers are at an increased risk of emotional exhaustion: calling to the need for mental health support as well.

How can we support our frontline employees? 

First and foremost, regardless of financial or personal situations, everyone can help in one way or another.

Below, we offer a few suggestions, organized around 3 common themes: (1) identifying the most immediate and important needs, (2) determining how your unique expertise or skills can be put into use, and (3) finding ways to get involved or mobilize actions at the collective level.

Reduce the work demands in healthcare.

The single biggest thing each and every person can do is to stay-at-home and honor good physical distancing practices. In order to convince others to stay at home, we encourage attention to be given to marketing that really sells the need to stay at home.

As psychologists, we recognize that when people are mandated to do something in a way that hinders or limits their perceived freedom, the reaction is often distress, anxiety, and resistance in order to reclaim the perception of freedom. So, the question becomes: how can we encourage others to stay-at-home in a way that feels like a personal choice versus a mandate. Selling versus telling, if you will.

Marketing professionals, for example, have deep insight into consumer behavior and may consider volunteering their talents to craft effective stay-at-home campaigns. No formal marketing training? That is ok, reinforce the value of staying at home to your family and friends, and role model it yourself.

By now, many have also recognized the need to get creative in order to make the idea of staying at home more attractive. Check out this post for several ideas for how to utilize your time in new or unique ways.

Protect those who are out working on the frontlines.

Concerns about limited PPE for healthcare providers are still present. It would appear that this challenge is one few can help with. But, there are ways to be creative to alleviate this concern. 

Innovations including the realignment of manufacturing plants to make necessary PPE, and their components is a welcomed support mechanism for our healthcare providers.

Companies such as Under Armour, General Motors, Carhartt, and Gap are examples of those leading the way. Moreover, small business owners, with the necessary tools and resource realignment, can support production efforts as well (e.g., breweries, clothing manufacturers).

In addition to producing actual equipment, healthcare workers could benefit from legal support and advice. There have been reports of nurses and other workers who have been denied decision-making and protective rights. Legal and advocacy professionals are well-positioned to support and champion the rights of those who are selflessly fighting to save lives.

Buffer the intense demands placed on healthcare workers.

One word: burnout.

Burnout occurs when demands exceed capacity. Currently, healthcare demands have far exceeded capacity in many cities around the world. Burnout, in addition to being an unpleasant experience, is associated with significant emotional exhaustion that can lead to long-term physiological and psychological changes.

Mental health professionals and workplace behavior experts are equipped with skills and tools that can be applied to guard against the negative consequences of burnout. 

One solution for managing these consequences - for individuals - is to engage in a regular mindfulness or meditation practice. Entrepreneurs working in this space, such as Headspace, have offered their platform for free to healthcare workers during this time.

In addition to a therapeutic approach to reduce the effects of burnout, efforts can be taken to balance the demand-capacity equation to reduce the likelihood of burnout occurring in the first place. 

Like many others affected by the sudden changes in life, healthcare workers are also balancing multiple roles as parents, spouses, and colleagues with household, eldercare and petcare responsibilities. How can we help here? 

As an example, Sittercity offers free membership for healthcare workers to access babysitters. Those looking for or offering childcare help on this website often make very explicit calls for others who are also observing social distancing.

The average person may also consider volunteering to lend a hand to healthcare providers, where possible. For instance, consider how you might help neighbors who are healthcare professionals: drop off a home-cooked meal, help order their groceries, create a self-care package to help them wind down after long, stressful shifts, take out their garbage, or walk their dog.

These efforts may seem small in comparison, but social support is key to successfully managing through these stressful times.

We’ve shared many disparate ideas, and in closing, we would like to address how you could organize broader collective efforts. Of course, each person can decide on ways to take initiative to act and do so on their own. Remember: the goal is to find ways to help the helpers - from following physical distancing rules to repurposing an assembly line to make needed PPE, it all adds up into a huge collective impact. 

Going back individual ways of helping to combining efforts and mobilizing teams to work within a collective unit is where the rubber truly meets the road. 

What could collective action look like?

Here are 5 key steps.

1 - Begin with a mission or outcome in mind. What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Get crystal clear and intensely focus on this first.

2 - Determine what sets of skills are required to meet this mission/outcome. Tip: Think big, broad, and different - we’re inclined to choose those within our networks (who are often like us, with similar backgrounds), but think outside the box when it comes to building your team. 

• For example, based on some of the suggestions we offered about, a support team may include a subset or all of the following professionals: marketing manager, lawyer, therapist, manufacturing engineer, organizational development consultant, and anyone who identifies as a social activist.
• A good model of a recent effort with a big, broad, and novel mission was HackFromHome, which was a 48-hour hackathon involving teams working to create technology in response to COVID-19. Twenty eight teams, with a total of 822 international participants completed the hackathon with projects focused on apps supporting self-organized local delivery, sharing resources, reducing barriers to exercise while at home, and tracking burnout among nurses.

3 - Get organized. Ensure you have a well-structured healthcare worker support team with a shared mission to offer comprehensive support.

4 - Identify roles, responsibilities, desired outcomes, and means of communication. For instance, social network and project management platforms such as Facebook, Slack, or Microsoft Teams can be leveraged to support coordination efforts, communicate, and track progress.

• An example with clear roles, responsibilities, and outcomes is the COVID Student Service Corp, a student-learning initiative that targets urgent healthcare concerns through a variety of service projects. The groups include an oversight committee, project leaders, and coordinators. 

5 - Share! Vocalize your efforts on social media, share with family and friends, and get the word out regarding the mission and work you’re doing. In our virtual world, this type of visibility is key to ensure your efforts can have their intended impact. 

We’ll leave you with this question: What is one action you can take, right now, to help the helpers? 

Whether your action is to share this post, continue sheltering at home, or build a cross-disciplinary team to take collective action, know that you are helping. You’re part of the solution. And you’re making a difference.

Written, in collaboration, by Shanique Brown, Ph.D. & Stefanie Mockler, M.A.