Managing the "COVID Shiftstorm"

By Lisa Leong and Monique Ross?

Have you received a phone call lately with the news that another one of your team members has COVID?

You find yourself (once again) trying to backfill, and (once again) calling on people who are already stretched. You think about hiring new staff to help plug the gaps, but labour shortage is making that feel impossible.

It's a big bad puzzle - what we’re calling the COVID Shiftstorm. And you feel like you are smack bang in the centre of it.

As a manager, you are compassionately trying to shield your staff from this - but who is looking after you??

In our latest episode of ABC’s This Working Life, Professor Kim Felmingham, the chair of Clinical Psychology in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne, says many businesses are still lacking in caring for managers and assessing how people with higher levels of responsibility are coping.?

She explained that the relentlessness of COVID has led to a collective feeling of exhaustion. She likens the impact to burnout. Here are some of the warning signs…?

• Overreacting to small things that you’d normally cope well with
• Being irritable or snappy, and then feeling guilty about it
• Giving up more readily or getting frustrated easily
• Feeling that everything is piling up, and doubting your capacity to handle it
• Feeling ground down and exhausted, even when you first wake up
• Being unsure about your role in the workplace?
• Having less spontaneity and joy in your life

We’re hoping you didn’t say “yes” to all of these…?

So what can you do?

There are no easy answers, but here are three ideas to get you started.?

Be transparent?

Be open and upfront about the context you are working in, the constraints you have and the challenges you face. Partner with your team and work together on solutions, contingency plans and self-care strategies.?

You might ask: what can we do as a team to make this easier for all of us??

Don’t underestimate your team’s ability to come up with creative new approaches.

Bring empathy back

Empathy is our superpower as human beings.

Our empathy can fade when we are drained and tired, but it’s worth finding a way to restore it. If everyone is snapping at everyone all the time, we’re not going to get far.

Let ‘good enough’ be good enough

There is only so much you can do. There is only so much your team can do.

It might just be time to embrace the ‘good enough’ standard. Be realistic with your expectations, and be mindful of how much you’re asking people to do and what loads they are carrying. This applies to you, too.

“If you can do 50% at the moment, that’s good enough. The world is not going to fall apart,” Professor Felmingham says.

“We constantly are in this overdrive where once we achieve something, we’ve got to go for that next goal, that next goal. And you know what? It’s madness.”

Listen to the whole episode here?

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/this-working-life/managing-the-managers-covid-shiftstorm/13810664? Thanks to Producers Zoe Ferguson and Maria Tickle.?

And you can read more on stress and burnout in This Working Life the book www.thisworkinglifebook.com?