We had all these COVID good intentions.
We wanted to create brave new workplaces and dreamed of developing a new way of working. Now, we find ourselves stumbling over misguided or unenforceable remote/hybrid work policies, creating further inequities, and quickly losing hard-earned gains in attempts to diversify or unify our workforce. What happened?
While some workplaces have made changes, many teams and individuals feel more chronically stressed than they did before the pandemic, and anxiety levels continue to rise globally.
With so many people invested in trying to make a change and build a better post-pandemic workplace, how did we get here and how can we move beyond?
What I’m Hearing from Fortune 100 Companies
When COVID was at the forefront of our consciousness, we saw people pull together. We talked about a greater need for mutual respect, understanding, appreciation, and a sensitivity to how challenging the time was.
During COVID, while many employees chose to resign and pursue very different lifestyles, those who stayed at their organizations demonstrated remarkable loyalty and appreciation.
They came together to solve a common goal, driven by a clear and positive call to action: to take care of one another, knowing that sacrifice was required to keep afloat. We unlocked discretionary effort in our people by listening to and accommodating their needs, and they responded with gratitude and commitment.
Somewhere in the push to “get back to normal,” we lost that.
Big pressure from leadership looms – a pressure to keep growing, hitting arbitrary goals and deadlines, and advancing quickly regardless of the overall circumstances.
Whether they realize it or not, leaders are keeping their people in constant survival mode and pushing them toward disengagement and burnout. In the absence of a crisis, leaders are still using crisis-like tactics to push their people, but because it’s fabricated and inauthentic, the buy-in just isn’t there.
I’ve heard from leading executives that they are spending time, money, and energy on process changes, workplace policies, and efficiency overhauls. Yet with all that investment, their people continue to be exhausted and burned out.
What Results from this Environment?
When we force people to function in an atmosphere of relentlessness, uncertainty and fear, we lose more than just their drive. We lose their engagement and loyalty. Consider these facts:
43 percent of workers are considering leaving their jobs soon, most often because of unsustainable workloads.
Employees’ biggest hopes regarding a post-COVID workplace focused on work-life balance, flexibility, and wellbeing.
Despite their desire for balance, people are working through more sick days and neglecting their wellbeing in an effort to meet expectations.
We’re so far from where we hoped to be a few years ago.
What We Need to Move Forward
While COVID was an unprecedented and challenging time, we gained some new skills and knowledge during it – some valuable and some less so. On the positive side, we acquired:
- A greater commitment to shared problem solving
- Human ingenuity and a greater capacity for creativity
- More civility and understanding about how wellness and work-life imbalance matter
- Greater trust in our colleagues and ourselves
We also, unfortunately, gained:
- An enjoyment of the feeling of frantic urgency that came with on-the-fly COVID work
- Fewer work-life boundaries
Some workplaces and leaders who were influence-driven during COVID have now leaned back in to authority to pull back the freedoms and flexibility they offered their teams during the pandemic.
The result? In many cases, we’ve created an environment that’s reactive and stress-driven instead of the productive, energy-inspired sustainable workplace we dreamed of building.
How to Change It
We can all agree – this isn’t how we want to live or work. We need to create a new reality – one where we get the work done and also manage our energy.
It starts with the acknowledgement that WE ARE NOT IN CRISIS.
When we act like we’re in crisis and use stress in an attempt to motivate people, they see through that. They may get the work done but it’s at the cost of continuing to push them away and wear them down.
Tapping people out daily means they don’t have anything left to give when there is a real crisis.
Instead of alarming your people, arm and equip them to be productive and proactive. Give them resources that work and fuel them in tough times. You can start by:
- Lead with high positive energy. Energy is contagious. If you are always defending and buffering for your team, you are not adding value. Expect more from yourself and your leaders for a sustainable approach to work. Have real conversations about emotional energy you’re expending and receiving each day.
- Demonstrating courage. Your high-achieving team members may feel a sense of shame if they’re overwhelmed or behind. Have the courage to share with your team what you’re experiencing and your own vulnerabilities, so you can work together toward mutually beneficial solutions.
- Evaluate your energy state. At all times, you are in one of these four states: performance, regenerate, survival, or burnout. In performance, you feel unbeatable, while in burnout, you feel unable to move forward or care. No one wants to be at that low point but unless you mindfully invest in recovery, you’ll find yourself dealing with those disengaged, stressed, frustrated feelings. Ask yourself and your team members where you are and what you’re each feeling, so you can make shifts that support everyone’s needs for time spent restoring your energy, planning, resetting, and identifying higher value work in the regenerate state.
When we faced the challenge of COVID, we handled it because we were committed to pooling resources and making things work. An external impetus required collective action to reshape our workforce. Now, it’s on you as a leader to reach within, inspire change, and recover commitment to a workplace that works in the context of a life that works.
What if we did the same thing again, using today as a starting point and an opportunity to recommit and recalibrate? Let’s use our knowledge of energy-inspired performance to re-establish working rules for our teams, and see where we find ourselves in this post-COVID world.
