How to Support Your Employees During the COVID-19 Pandemic

When you reflect on 2020, what do you think of? Surely one of the first things to come to mind is the coronavirus. As a business owner trying to keep your company alive, you wonder how you can keep your employees aboard.

With the coronavirus sticking around, you need to support employees during times of ongoing difficulty. See how you can by reading on.

Support Employees Like No One Else Does

As a business owner, you’ve been uniquely affected by the coronavirus. You’re also uniquely capable of helping your employees out in these times.

Start by showing them your appreciation for all that they do. Employees across all industries want to feel stable, empowered, and included despite this challenging period. The one action you can take that will most make them feel those ways is to demonstrate your appreciation.

Praise, recognize, and otherwise appreciate your employees’ effort, work, dedication, and contributions. Say “thank you” for doing a good job or send an email recognizing their work.

Take your appreciation a step further by mentioning an employee’s work so that a manager can hear. Or discuss an employee’s accomplishments during team meetings. Give employees chances to collaborate more closely with senior leadership.

Next, provide employees with one-on-one support. Demonstrate to employees that you understand their work arrangements. Different employees have different preferences, needs, and circumstances surrounding such arrangements.

Show that you care by consistently checking in with them about their and their families’ well-being. Meet with them individually to give more direction and reassign work tasks to them to best accommodate them.

A Caring Boss

A business leader who cares also gets its employees involved in decision-making. Seek and implement your workers’ input.

Ask them to immediately voice their concerns. Hold meetings that ask for their opinions—plan periodical open forums to allow them to share their thoughts and questions.

It may not seem intuitive during an already stressful situation, but entrust your personnel with new responsibilities. Assigning workers fresh responsibilities makes them feel empowered.

Maybe they could assume some managerial roles when their bosses are overburdened. Moreover, they could be allowed to mentor colleagues using their expertise or history of remote work.

New roles provide workers with confidence and an opportunity to grow closer to their coworkers.

Finally, set aside space and time for team bonding. Plan happy hours, virtual coffee breaks, lunches, or games to play via Zoom.

Unfortunately, employee morale isn’t your only concern at the moment. Here’s what to know about Paycheck Protection Program loans.

Keeping Your Employees Healthy

The coronavirus can harm your employees in many ways. It can obviously infect an employee. Less obviously, it can ruin their morale by creating a worse work environment than before.

The agile business leader must adapt to a post-coronavirus working world by ensuring that their employees are as comfortable and happy in their new environment as they were in their old one. That’s how you support employees.

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