At present, there are still more questions than answers regarding coronavirus. It is unclear when or how the UK ‘lockdown’ will end (which the Tony Blair Foundation for Global Change recently sought to address with its report focussing on a sustainable exit strategy). Regardless of the UK’s approach for lifting lockdown, we will be living in what is euphemistically called a ‘new normal’. This creates new challenges and opportunities for the health and safety and allied professions.
A day after lockdown, people will not skip back to work as if nothing happened. While the UK is deciding on it’s exit strategy, organisations need to consider their own restart strategies. This could include some practical measures, such as refresher training for more complex tasks or explaining new workplace procedures. However, it could be helpful to hold group and one-to-one sessions to help staff rebond and offload by sharing experiences (and possibly grievances – not everyone will feel that their organisation coped well). These discussions could also highlight what additional support workers might need.
Despite the government’s support packages, some organisations are taking drastic steps to stay afloat and some have collapsed altogether. For example, Higher Education organisations are making hundreds of staff on fixed term/insecure contracts redundant. In the short term, there will be a huge pool of jobseekers. Organisations are also likely to be nervous about a second wave of coronavirus or another lockdown. This could prompt greater use of fixed term, insecure or zero-hour contracts. This introduces a range of potential challenges, such as workers feeling little ‘identification’ with their manager, team or organisation (possibly leading to higher turnover etc.). They may have less appreciation of tried and tested ways of working (which may not be written down) or the resources available to help them deal with the realities of work.
Many people have suffered loss or hardship during this crisis. Employees are unlikely to work productively if they are not effectively managing problems or anxieties. Organisations may need to invest more heavily in promoting EAP and checking that the provider is effectively helping workers cope with difficulties.
For many years, occupational health professionals and psychologists, such as Dr Roxanne Gervais, have raised concerns about presenteeism. This is when an ill person attends works, for a variety of reasons, when they should be recuperating at home. The person is unlikely to work effectively and could be more prone to making harmful mistakes. Their recovery time may be extended and they could cause others to become ill. Coronavirus illustrated that just issuing guidance on self-isolation was largely ineffective. It is foreseeable that organisations will need robust and fair systems for discouraging presenteeism. It is also likely that co-workers will take a dim view of colleagues who attend work coughing and spluttering (and could lead to grievances).
If older people need ongoing isolation, older workers may be unable to return to work for an extended period (possibly fuelling the need for home working). Younger workers might have also relied on older family members for childcare support. This may no longer be an option and these workers may also need to shop for family members who remain in isolation. Organisations ought to consider how to provide greater flexibility for workers, and more flexible working hours or home working could be options.
Home working is not practical for everyone. Where home working has been feasible, individuals and organisations may have experienced a range of benefits (such as less time and money ‘wasted’ in daily commutes). There is an ever-expanding range of articles on how to overcome the challenges of home working. Organisations could draw on this and the lessons learned during lockdown to create an effective home working policy.
Disabled workers might struggle to overcome barriers associated with traditional models of work, such as commuting to work. More homeworking and less travel will remove many of these barriers. This could give organisations access to a much wider and diverse pool of talent.
There could undoubtedly be an array of other impacts such as;
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
So returners going to be volunteering, unless consent obtained, to take part in an ongoing experiment to see how resilient human resources are to “sub-optimal” working conditions and whether current levels of presenteeism can be sustained with the added, potentially predictable risk, of working through hurd immunity to COVID-19, as well preexisting visual repetitive stress injuries experienced by 58% of DSE operators using standard contrast expediently avoiding risk assessment, colour contrast validation of in-house or external websites and, of course, individuals display screen interface.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAMeoCPVWRQ