It’s World Mental Health Day, and what an important day to acknowledge, and to pause and reflect on what this means for everyone and anyone. How does your culture support mental health, how do your leaders manage and support mental health, and do your employees have the right resources at their fingertips to truly seek the support they need?
The psychological safety for employees is paramount. The pandemic has put this firmly on the HR agenda and we need to seriously make this a priority in the workplace for employee wellbeing.
It’s very easy to say ‘let’s ditch the annual performance management appraisal process’, but what does that really mean? What should it look like? Where should we start? It’s not an easy transition and to change a major human resources program like performance management, we need to be sure of what we do want and what we don’t want to find the right solution. We also have to think about the other programs linked to performance management, like compensation, development and feedback.
We know from research that remote workers can be lonely and disengaged. Often they are working on their own, and a lot of the communication is over email, text and instant messaging. Whilst these communications are great and a necessity, there is a lack of human and social connection either over the phone or in person. There can be a great deal of isolation. This as you can imagine, has an impact on the individual and far outweighs performance expectations and tracking of time.
We are now in the midst of very uncertain times with the COVID-19 shutdown. Many businesses and markets have shut down or scaled back, many employees have been furloughed and others are working remotely. Some have adapted well to this way of working, while others may be struggling.
