5 ways to energise a tired team and combat pandemic fatigue
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
Employee burnout is setting in, just as the world is opening back up. Here are some strategies for leaders to boost employee engagement
After 16 months on the Corona-coaster, the ride seems, finally, to be slowing down. I’m privileged to be living in a country where we have vaccines to roll out, and life seems to be getting back to normal. So surely I should be ecstatic the world is opening up again?
Yes, there are days I jump out of bed at the sight of the sun shining brightly, ready to start the day. Yet there are also days I feel exhausted, foggy and joyless. There’s a lack of motivation and concentration I haven’t experienced in a long time. And I know I’m not alone in this pandemic fatigue.
Clients have been speaking to the anxiety they feel despite lockdown coming to an end. No one seems to be desperate to rush back to the pub. There’s uncertainty on how to use the office now, and hybrid working brings all sorts of new complications.
It’s yet another round of change, and it’s culminating in one thing above all: fatigue. There’s a lack of zest for life, and there’s even a term for it: languishing. It’s the opposite of flourishing as Adam Grant explains.
So here’s the challenge leaders face: the world is opening up right at the time their employees are burning out. Navigating this tension is our big leadership challenge. How can we as leaders work with the ‘blah’ most people are feeling and find ways to energise our teams and boost employee engagement whilst we continue to navigate our way out of the pandemic?
Before we get into the details, I’d like to highlight two important points:
Different people need different things right now. There’s no one right answer so it’s about giving people choice and it all starts with listening: what are your people saying they need to have the best employee experience right now?
The situation is still rapidly changing. Whilst the vaccine might help us with the physical symptoms of Covid, it doesn’t deal with the emotional side of it. What your people need can also change one moment to the next. Keep asking, keep listening.
5 ways to energise your tired team and boost employee engagement
Here are five different approaches, and trends in employee engagement, you can try to energise your team. Pick what suits people best after you’ve listened to what they need.
Rest and recuperate
This seems the obvious solution, even after all the Netflix binge watching we’ve been doing over the last year. We’re all still in need of rest. Because rest whilst in ‘fight or flight mode’ isn’t actually rest. Also, with travel still restricted, so many of us haven’t taken proper time off and our annual leave allowance is sitting there to be used.
Hootsuite over in North America just announced a week off for the whole business (at the same time), how is that for a statement? And one of our UK clients factored holiday schedules into their planning for summer season, knowing their people are in need of longer time off than usual.
What can you do right now? Ask who needs rest and work together to make it possible for people to take it.
2. Reconnect to what matters most
Without the office your people haven’t seen each other IRL in a long time. Many of my clients’ employees have joined during lockdown and never met their colleagues face to face. Now that it’s possible, many of them are finding ways to connect again in person. We need to recognise that not everyone is comfortable with this yet, and for some it’s vaccine dependent. But finding a way that suits your team is so worth the effort.
Alongside this, it’s a great time to reconnect your people to your organisation’s purpose and ambition. People feel most motivated when connected to WHY they do things, not just to WHAT they do. The why, or purpose, often speaks to contributing to something bigger than ourselves. It’s important for people to see the alignment of their work to the overall company picture. It plays directly into peoples’ intrinsic motivation and why they get out of bed in the morning.
What can you do right now? Help your people have conversations that connect their work to your organisation’s purpose. See chapter one in our ebook for some inspiration.
3. Recognise all contributions
Now that the world is opening up again, people are getting ready for a post-pandemic boom. Leaders need to ask their teams to get ready for this, knowing full well that many people are running out of steam. We want to avoid the pitfall of asking more of people without appreciating what they’ve already given. There’s a direct link between appreciation and burnout. A Psychtests.com study from a few years back showed 58% of unappreciated employees said the thought of going to work makes them feel physically ill (compared to 18% of appreciated workers).
And we don’t mean just recognising the big wins and successes; all contributions are important and should be celebrated. HBR writes: “Acknowledge each member’s work and achievements to the extent possible. Emphasize that people’s contributions are unique and necessary; do not let good work go unacknowledged.”
In our experience, a great way to recognise someone’s contribution is by creating space to reflect, and we help our clients do this through building cultures of feedback. Far too often we think of feedback as ‘what we can do better or more of’, but especially in times of challenge it’s important to celebrate everyone’s superpowers and the great contributions they make to our teams.
What can you do right now? Find moments to appreciate your team, linking your feedback directly to the contribution they’ve made.
4. Re-imagine success together
As a true Millennial I’m all too familiar with the term YOLO. The NY Times writes about how this could be the antidote to languishing, with many people (Millennials in particular) re-evaluating their life after a year of lockdown. They are reimagining their own success, waving goodbye to their big pay packages to pursue their newfound dream of becoming a yoga teacher in Bali.
At Within People we’ve been talking about reimagining success, on an organisational level, since the inception of our partnership. In fact, we’ve created a blueprint to help our clients on their way to purposeful growth. We’re big fans of getting your team involved in creating your ambition for the future, and believe that diverse perspectives on this will really help your organisation live up to its potential. Also, involving people in the shaping of your vision will help maximize a sense of empowerment and ownership, of which you will reap the benefits for years to come.
What can you do right now? Before making grand plans, get people together and ask the question: what does success look like for us? Create an inspiring picture of the future together and build your plans on the back of it.
5. Refocus attention
The default and knee-jerk reaction might be to take time off and rest, which might work for many of us, and other people might actually need some more challenge right now — something fresh and new to get involved in, which gives them focus and a sense of accomplishment. It might sound counterintuitive, but when done with care and empathy, it can actually break cycles of learned helplessness (the belief you can’t do anything without support) and shift peoples’ mindsets to being in control again.
It’s a way to encourage self-initiation and participation in your team right now, and as HBR explains, a great way to go about it is to ask, “What part of this project can you see yourself leading? It gives people choice and autonomy in a way that feels manageable right now, and it shows that you trust your team members to take this on.
What can you do right now? Where people are lacking inspiration, invite them into a new challenge. Better still, help them swap it in for something on their current ‘to do’ list.
As mentioned this is no ‘one size fits all’. What I need personally varies week by week, and what I find most helpful is to follow my energy and let that inform what I need to tap into. Sometimes that means taking the day off to sunbathe in the park, and other days it’s dedicating myself to a new client or a project to help grow our partnership. If you’d like some space to explore how you can help energise your people best right now to combat employee burnout and pandemic fatigue, we’d love to hear from you and have a conversation.
