Mental Health in the Time of COVID: A Manager’s Guide to Helping Employees

Recent surveys have “discovered that, across the board, we’ve all been impacted by COVID-19. In both the US and the UK, there was a staggering 27% drop in self-reported mental wellness in the workplace across all segments and populations, and for more reasons than you might think.” 1

T?his survey and dozens like it that have been published in the last few months, highlight a massive problem: the huge impact of the COVID pandemic on employee’s mental health.

The truth is that most of us don’t need a survey or some HR consultant to tell us this. As managers and leaders, we can see it in our staff and ourselves.

 A recent UN study suggests that the increased reliance on mobile devices may push the work-from-home crowd over the edge into higher-stress territory.

 A higher reliance on smartphones and laptops is associated with higher stress levels in addition to greater social isolation and even insomnia, both of which are conversely linked with greater stress.

In this article, I will highlight things that managers can do to make things easier on your employees, help them with their mental health, and increase their happiness levels a bit. Now as ever, happy employees do better work, so it’s in a company’s best interest to invest in everyone’s mental wellbeing.

We all have heard the flight attendants go through their safety remarks and tell us, “put your mask on first, then help someone else on with theirs.” The same applies to mental health. If you’re experiencing stress, depression, or anxiety, you should be the first one seeking help, making changes, and increasing your own happiness and comfort.

Your employees need you now more than ever. Take care of yourself so you can take care of them. 

Most importantly, you need to give yourself permission to take care of you. Yes, you’re a leader, but you’re a human first. Take care of your humanness, and you’ll be better equipped to care for your staff.

How to Help Employees

For most of us, our employees are working from home. Their spouses/ partners may have been laid off, children might be homeschooling, and family members might have been directly impacted by COVID-19.   The very first step is to ask. Invite them for a coffee (in a safe, socially-distanced way), call them, zoom them, whatever you need to do to speak to them as an individual. Ask how they’re doing and what they need. A gesture from you, as their boss, that signals they are cared for will go a long way to helping them feel less isolated.

Beyond that, here’s a list of some things that you can do make life a little easier for their employees:

Transparency - Be open and honest about work, shutdowns, and everything affecting the business. Your staff is probably terrified that they won’t have work soon or that working from home has made them less effective.

Take the time to tell everyone about the company's revenues, profitability, and the security of their jobs. Let them know that, in spite of the fact that you’re not right there to see them working, you can see the results and everyone is fine. No one is going to get fired.

Sick leave/vacation - Many times, there are some very specific restrictions on sick leave and vacation. Doctor’s notes, notification restrictions, and other procedures have been put in place for a reason-- Let all of that go (to an extent). If someone just needs a mental health day to sit and watch television, let them take a sick day. If their children are struggling with at-home schooling, let them take vacation time to get that sorted out.

Time off, even though they might not be able to go anywhere, can be a powerful tool to help them keep their house and life in order. If their families are okay, they’re going to be much less stressed. Even a little time off to simply read a book may help!

Flex time - Letting employees work earlier, stay later, or even do work in the middle of the night will help them rearrange their lives to this new order. For salaried employees, now is a great time to simply tell them that they just have to get their work done. “Do it in 20 hours or 60, as long as it gets done.” 

With children home from school, spouses struggling for work, and families needing assistance, any way that you can allow them to adapt their work schedule to their lives will help reduce stress and friction.  

Mental Health Benefits - Many employees have run out of mental health benefits already. Most insurance policies have a finite number of counseling visits per year. Now is a great time to explore extending those benefits. 

If all or most of your employees live in the same area, you can do what some companies have done and create an open-ended contract with a mental health facility, a place with multiple counselors that will allow employees to visit or call as often as needed will be a huge help.  

Utilizing the Tele-med counseling feature offered by most health insurance companies is another great resource for employees.  

Face-to-face - If your staff is working from home, arrange an occasional face-to-face meeting in a socially distanced way. Even if it’s just with you for coffee, a little personal interaction will go a long way to helping them feel better about their lives. Or perhaps small teams can meet monthly in a socially-distanced location. If you can get everyone outside, that’s great, but if it’s inside, beware the stress that “insisting” on in person meetings might have on individuals who are not comfortable with this. 

Allow some social time within work time. These are people who are used to spending as much time together as they do with their families; let them just chat for a while. For example, spend some time chatting at the beginning or end of a meeting. 

Breaks - Make breaks every hour mandatory. Tell everyone that they need to step away from their computer for 5 minutes of every hour. When we’re working from home, we often get so sucked into our work that we won’t stand up for hours.  

Phone calls versus virtual meeting- Just yesterday, yet another person told me how tired her eyes were from looking at Zoom all day. For many of us, we are used to working with staff, colleagues and clients across the globe. But was every meeting always “in person” using video technology? No! Often, we would simply call one another. Break up your day and try to weave in some good old-fashioned conference calls. One executive I spoke with explains, “I mark the meeting invite as ‘video’ or ‘audio only’ so that my staff and colleagues know what format the meeting will be in”. 

Encourage everyone to take up some form of meditation or mindfulness. Getting everyone a subscription to a mindfulness app might be a great use of money. Mindfulness is one of the best ways to stave off depression and anxiety. 

Socializing - Companies are hosting Friday afternoon cocktail parties online. It’s a little different, but everyone can grab an adult beverage and just chat. Allow them to break out in private conversations and talk about whatever they want. 

Make socializing part of the workplace. It’s difficult for everyone to get started, but it will help to let them just chat together about whatever. 

Virtual office setting - A few tech companies have designed virtual office programs where people can get from office to office, each office being a private chat room. There’s even a breakroom for people to be able to get away for a coffee break. Check out https://wurkr.io/.  

This virtual office gives the feel of a normal office with everyone working in their own spaces. When someone needs to communicate with another person, they go to that “office.” It’s a brilliant way to let everyone stay in touch in a format they’re familiar with. 

There are many more ideas that you can put in place to help your employees cope through all of these radical changes that have been happening over the last year. 

And don’t forget - take care of yourself too. Your team needs you to be strong and clear-headed. 

What about the costs of all of these ideas?

The costs to companies of the stressed-out workers won’t be measured and quantified for some time. But we do see reports that mental health issues costs employers billions of dollars. Employees are struggling to keep it together every day, slowing down productivity and impacting family dynamics.   

As an employer, it will be less expensive to create a robust mental health program than it will be to lose team members. Most of these ideas are free or very low cost. Many don’t require anything more that some of your time.  

Looking for ways to help individuals or teams eliminate stress or work more cohesively? Looking for ways to enhance your managers toolkit in managing a remote workforce? HR Ignite has coaching and training programs that can immediately benefit your manager’s and employee’s. Contact us for more info! [email protected]