When a crisis like COVID-19 happens, caring for your employees is a top priority. Reaching your employees during a crisis and keeping them informed with important updates and information helps them feel safe and connected to the organization. These efforts can go a long way in showing employees you care.
Care is related to lower stress and burnout. When employees feel their organization cares, 50% say their stress is manageable (compared with 14% of those who don’t feel care).
Effective crisis communication, leadership and manager support, along with activities centered around helping your employees stay informed, healthy and safe are the first steps to both uniting your company and maximizing your ecosystem during difficult times.
Putting Care Into Action
Limeade offers a science-backed library of hundreds of whole-person well-being activities and a global Well-Being Assessment created by Limeade Institute organizational psychologists.
Here are a few examples of activities that Limeade has launched during the COVID-19 crisis:
Whole Person Activities: Well-being activities (physical, emotional, financial and work well-being).
- Take care of yourself
- Learn the facts about COVID-19
- Prevent the spread of COVID-19 at home and at work
- Handwashing
- Clear your workspace to clear your mind
- Exhale your worries
- Exhale stress with your team
Whole Company Activities: Company culture, leader and manager activities.
- Manager check-ins, how to have a great 1:1
- Check in often during times of crisis
- Staying connected while working remotely
- Leader video and communications
- Poll/survey: Check in with your employees
Other activity recommendations to consider:
Whole Ecosystem Activities: Integration with well-being partners and HR services (like payroll, vacation tracking, HRIS) to increase awareness and participation in HR benefits.
- COVID-19: CDC, WHO resources/links
- Programs: EAP, meditation, sleep resources, ergonomics
- Policies: Internal crisis policies, WFH, safety
- Coaching
Reach Every Employee With Real-Time Communications
The need for a multichannel, bidirectional solution to communicate proactively and to help you react to feedback is crucial during times of crisis. With effective communications targeted to specific audiences, you can do the following:
- Administer frequent surveys or check-ins to keep a pulse on how your employees are feeling and identify shifts in needs and attitudes.
- Communicate resources, company policies and real-time communications to your employees.
- Deliver real-time information from reputable resources to your employees (e.g., CDC/WHO updates).
- Provide real-time information to different locations and respond immediately with up to date information.
- Create a task for employees to “check-in” within a designated location to confirm they are safe during times of crisis.
- Allow your employees to share important public information directly with their social networks.
Showing care to employees during a crisis goes beyond a message of encouragement or a statement in an email regarding company policy updates. It’s the library full of activities to help educate employees along with general self-care activities that are important every day, but especially important during a health crisis like COVID-19. It’s also the open lines of communication between the organization, leaders and employees. What and how you communicate with your employees during a crisis can showcase care (or a lack thereof).
Watch our new online training to learn more best practices to support employees with care during times of crisis: Care During Crisis – COVID-19