The pandemic has changed the rules of the game for progressive employers
Many of us hoped that Covid-19 was slowly going away but unfortunately have been rudely awakened. Nobody truly knows if and when vaccines will be safe and widely available. Until then we’ll all have to cope with a very uncertain work environment, both for employers as well as employees.
Employees are struggling with separating work from home life and coping with loneliness. Younger workers, in particular, are concerned about losing the less obvious career-boosting benefits of office life: networking opportunities, ready access to mentors, and the ability to casually ping their neighbors for help.
Before the pandemic, working from home was already viewed as very beneficial for employees. Who doesn’t love wearing sweatpants every day, avoiding a stressful commute and enjoying quality time with their dog? But what we are experiencing in 2020 is a different kind of WFH. It is no longer an exceptional perk but rather a rule which has flipped our previous concept of work and the office upside down.
A recently released study by Oracle and Workplace Intelligence surveyed 12,000 people across 11 countries and found that 78% of the global workforce reported negative impacts to their mental health this year.
Through our own tal&dev in-depth study of more than 1,000 assessed professionals, we found that more than 20% of individuals require some sort of special attention and care by their employers due to the new working environment. Our studies show that plenty of employees are already waving red flags when being assessed.
An example of the tal&dev covid-19 check, based off of a 15min assessment
However, these warning signs are not necessarily being picked up. Lots of companies are taking a poor approach in dealing with this special situation.
The use of tracing apps to track employee productivity, activity and location is on the rise. A growing number of organizations are ramping up their efforts to monitor employee productivity. However, they are underestimating the additional risks they are creating for their companies and their employees.
Corporate surveillance comes at a higher cost than one might think as it threatens to erode trust and further aggravate pre-existing stress, increasing dissatisfaction and burnout, both of which — ironically — decrease productivity.
This creates an opportunity for progressive employers that believe in taking care, preserving and further developing their most important assets.
Employers should focus on monitoring stress risk levels rather than desktop tabs. They should prioritize tailored support in a scalable way.
tal&dev, a startup in the Future of Work, amongst its other abilities, is there to help progressive employers with its state of the art Covid-19 feature. It has created a tool for employers to survey its associate base and define joint responses to alleviate the pain.
Check out our tool for yourself!
