Managers are being urged to take on a more active role in supporting employees as ongoing pandemic lockdowns and restrictions take their toll.
Although organisation-wide initiatives remained important, workplaces needed to encourage managers to offer more individualised support to employees, Ai Group’s Culture & Capability Lead Diana Zweig said.
“The organisation-wide initiatives were great when this all began, whether it was Zoom drinks, care packages, online fitness classes or any number of other initiatives designed to support and care for employees.
“We all went into this together, learning about and feeling our way through things almost day by day and while we may have all been ‘in the same boat’ at the start of the pandemic, it’s a different story today.
“Today ‘we’re all in the same ocean’ but some of us are on a piece of driftwood, others are on luxury steamliners. We’re not in the same boat.
“Nearly 18 months in, and with different impacts in the various states and territories, it feels different.
“The person who is homeschooling and working full time feels the impact differently to the person who has a partner who is not working or the person who lives alone.
“We have all gone through different experiences since those initial days and weeks in 2020 so therefore we’re not all in it together anymore.
“Things have moved on from that time, so the initiatives to support our people need to move on from there, as well.”
Ms Zweig said a manager’s role in providing support to employees struggling with lockdowns or restrictions such as working from home was crucial these days because they knew their employees better than anyone else in the organisation.
“Your HR or People & Culture team is a strong resource to support and offer guidance for any plan of action but isn’t a panacea for your troubles,” she said.
“Organisation-wide activities and initiatives will still have their place, but managers should be looking to their P&C team for support and coaching on the information that comes from the conversations managers are having directly with their people.”
The kind of support needed has changed, too.
“Listening and empathy is still key, but offer action with that,” Ms Zweig said.
“It’s not enough to say ‘I’m here for you. Let me know if you need anything.’
“It needs to go beyond that now.
“It needs to be: ‘I’ve heard you and here is my help. This is how I’ve removed this obstacle for you.’
“This time the obstacles may be a little more personal. It’s not necessarily the traditional ones a manager might be used to such as a bottleneck at work. It might be something in that person’s home life or mental health that is being impacted by the situation they are in.
“So, listen and then show through your actions that you are a person they can count on and that you will follow through and will help them.
“Hopefully, that will also continue to build a culture of people being open and authentic with you.”
Ms Zweig said managers should be accessing all the resources available to them to best support their team members.
“Other than your P&C team, other roles in the organisation like mental health first aiders or manager sessions from an Employee Assistance Provider (EAP) are an absolute lifeline now and many organisations already have those in place,” she said.
Ms Zweig offers a gentle reminder for managers, too.
“Managers are also employees,” she said.
“We all know the adage of putting our own oxygen mask on first, so managers should be ensuring they are taking care of their own mental health so they can continue to support their teams because as we have seen so far, this is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Wendy Larter is Communications Manager at the Australian Industry Group. She has more than 20 years’ experience as a reporter, features writer, contributor and sub-editor for newspapers and magazines including The Courier-Mail in Brisbane and Metro, the News of the World, The Times and Elle in the UK.
