Living with COVID@work – The Adaptive Challenges for Leaders and Organisations

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly touched most people across the entire globe and will have broad and deep implications for many Australian communities and organisations. Worryingly, public health experts are warning Australians to prepare to live with COVID-19, or its potential mutations, for the foreseeable future - two years? five years? ten years? longer?

In this context, with all the uncertainties and complexities, leaders worth their salt will recognise and attend to many adaptive challenges – past, present and future – that the pandemic is, and will present to organisations and people. Such adaptive challenges for businesses may include supply chain issues and stock shortages, delays in service delivery, having to stand employees down in some sectors, severe skills shortages in others, loss in revenue and grappling with the fears associated with business survival.

Just as importantly, leaders also need to be cognisant of the numerous personal impacts the pandemic has had on people and the implications this will continue to have for the workplace. Many people have wrestled with the challenges associated with working from home, home schooling, dealing with the confusion of continuously changing social distancing rules, concerns about their own health and that of their families. Some people have been infected by the COVID-19 virus and are dealing with the debilitating effects of long COVID-19. Many people will have experienced the fear of having sick or aged relatives and know the trauma of not having access to their loved ones at a time when they were most vulnerable and possibly dying.

In the past two years people have muddled through life without their usual social structures, rituals and organisational routines. Some people lost their jobs and livelihoods. For those fortunate enough to retain employment, different challenges presented as the sports and social clubs that were their main source of relaxation and exercise shut down; the social groups or churches they found grounding were no longer operating in their reliable and consistent format; weddings and funerals were cancelled or missed, the elective surgery that was to relieve their pain was delayed, once, twice, three times. Many new grandparents missed the joy of holding a newborn, grandchildren. Many of us celebrated not just one, but two birthdays alone; hundreds of thousands of us had our holiday plans cancelled and repeatedly put on hold often losing thousands of dollars in lost deposits.

Life has changed; people have changed. In their professional lives some employees may have settled into new ways of working and have adapted to the challenges of working in a distributed work force; they may even be flourishing in their new patterns of work and life; others may not. Those who have adapted and like the new order may find re-integrating back into onsite working extremely challenging and frustrating – think loss of flexibility, autonomy, uninterrupted quiet work time, not to mention once again bearing the costs in time, money and wellbeing that may come from returning to a lengthy, daily commute.

Some employees will relish going back into the office having missed the structures, regular routines, direct supervision and social contacts. And just as the experiences, hopes and needs of individuals will be different, no two organisations will be the same. The experiences of staff at a large metropolitan hospital will be markedly different that those at a small rural health service. There is likely to be considerable contrast in the employee experience of those who are employed by supermarket chains and those who had worked in an inner-city café in Melbourne. Corporate employees will have had vastly different experiences depending on where they live and the sector they service. A Melbourne banker will not have experienced COVID-19 in the same way as a miner in the Pilbara.

Irrespective of the industry sector and how the daily operations of its members have been challenged by COVID-19, the reality is their workforces may be exhausted, discombobulated, anxious and have possibly been questioning their professional and personal lives. Leaders will need to understand how employee attitudes and expectations have been shaped by the experiences of the last two years as they establish the new ways of working that will be demanded by COVID-19.

What can leaders expect in the coming months? Research conducted by consulting firms and universities highlight a number of risk and resilience factors associated with employees’ mental health and well-being. Identified risk factors include feelings of personal vulnerability to infection, lack of autonomy and disempowerment, compliance with (or lack of) with preventative measures, moving into the unknown with potentially new staff, teams or structures and moving from social isolation to engagement at a number of levels. The research flags multiple workplace stressors which may cause some employees to experience a level of psychological distress that is detrimental to their health and wellbeing.

Against this backdrop it will not be sufficient to recall people back to the workplace and resume operations as though the pandemic was just a blip in modern history. No one, not even those lightly touched by the pandemic, will realistically expect that at the announcement of a CEO or organisational leader, people will re-enter the workplace and simply pick up where they left off two years ago.

All of our research, and the anecdotal evidence we hear from our clients, is that 2022 will continue to present new and complex, adaptative challenges for leaders and the people working in their organisations. These challenges cannot be effectively addressed with old approaches and previous ways of thinking.

In response to the emergent understanding of how the pandemic has impacted people and their organisations Laurel Sutton and Anne Hartican have partnered to design a powerful process to support people as they embrace Living with COVID@work. Details of our process and our contact details are enclosed in the attached:

Laurel Sutton - laurel.sutton@cre-ativ-cognicion.com.au

Dr Anne Hartican - annehartican@lifecraftingaustralia.com.au or annehartican@bigpond.com