Every Manager’s Guide to Navigating a Post-Coronavirus World

Apr 15

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Matt Nigh, an accomplished tech executive and engineering leader, offers up a guide for managers dealing with workplace challenges brought about by COVID-19.

Is your team ready to navigate the next few months as people begin returning to the office?

Things won’t return to normal soon. Until a vaccine is found, companies are likely to see a large number of their team members impacted by COVID-19.

Some of the groups/people who will be impacted by COVID-19:

Immunosuppressed individuals (or people with immunosuppressed household members)
People at a greater risk of infection ( employees who need to use public transit or people in jobs where travel is required)
People with children and other dependents
People whose household income has been impacted by the crisis
People who experience loss or other negative impacts

The potential for future waves of COVID-19 is a major concern. In order to prevent future waves, there will be meaningful restrictions that impact employers and their people. We are likely to see impacts to large gatherings of people, public transit availability, travel (especially international), and the childcare/school/health services that are available to your employees.

Some of your people will be forced to continue to isolate themselves until a vaccine is found or until virus spread is no longer a concern. Failing to do so could mean the difference between life and death to them or people in their household.

We are in a novel and dynamic situation. Much of how we adapt will depend on the situation in that moment.

But for now, there are a few areas where every manager should begin focusing.

3 areas for managers to navigate:

People
Policies & Processes
Physical Space

People

Start with your team. A recent SHRM article quoted Horace Porras, Vice President, Human Resources for American Tower Corporation. He argues, "The most important thing we can do in HR is to show we care. Every person is a world."

First, how is your team doing?

Patrick Lencioni recently wrote an article advocating managers’ need to “. . . be exceedingly human. . . By that, I mean that you should demonstrate your concern for the very real fears and anxieties that your people are experiencing, not only professionally and economically, but socially and personally.”

Many people on your team have had their lives thrown into disarray.

Have you spent time listening to your team and discussing concerns? By listening to their fears, and transparently sharing your own, you can let them know they are not alone. It also gives you the ability to help your people wherever possible.

Consider leveraging anonymous surveys to elicit transparent concerns and feedback from your team. This does not negate the need for conversations, however. Surveymonkey created templates for HR teams and managers to get started.

Second, have you helped your team understand what benefits are available to them?

Your people may experience challenges they have never had before, or they may need benefits they haven’t ever used as an employee (for example, FMLA for a sick child). Craft benefits information with COVID-19 specifically in mind (rather than a generalized communication).

Some examples of information that could be helpful to employees:

Health benefits that can be used while isolated (call-in nurses, virtual doctor appointments, etc.)
Local businesses or services that could help your team. For example, there could be a local mobile testing service covered by your insurance or a specific hospital that has started offering virtual visits.
Helping your employees understand and request reasonable accommodations.
Bereavement and grief benefits for those impacted
Mental health and wellness resources

Your HR team should create a process to assess what is valuable communication for the entire team. If your company doesn’t have an intranet, consider creating a wiki for COVID-19 resources. SaaS solutions like Confluence and Notion are two platforms used to create and manage wikis quickly without needing any technical resources.

Helping make important information easy to access and clear will remove a lot of frustration and double work.

Third, how are leaders training managers through this?

Managers need help and guidance from executive leaders immediately.

How are your leaders guiding new and inexperienced managers? How are leaders guiding experienced managers challenged by this extraordinary situation?

Managers are suddenly managing in a dramatic crisis. Many will need to learn enhanced soft skills to help teams deal with prolonged pain and disruption. How are your company and executives supporting their managers?

Executives should commit a specific amount of time each week to training and growing their managers specific to the challenges presented by COVID-19:

What conversations should a manager be having with their team?

Do your managers communicate with concern, care, and respect?
Does your management show the listening skills you want them to?
How well do your managers handle hard conversations that will come up in a pandemic (for example, a family death, child sickness, reasonable accommodations, etc.)?
What benefits do all managers need to be aware of in detail?
How can managers take care of themselves mentally while taking care of their teams?

Roleplaying is one of the best training techniques to use with your team. Soft skills training isn’t fun, but it is necessary. Practicing frequently gives managers a chance to move past their fears and embarrassment as well. Managers should not learn how to have hard conversations at the expense of their employees.

By investing in managers, executives can focus on the larger picture and impact. Executives should be delegating crisis management and response to their team.

As a recent HBR article argues, “Leaders need to intentionally pull back, opening your mental aperture to take in the mid-ground and background. It is what we call meta-leadership — taking a broad, holistic view of both challenges and opportunities. Properly focused meta-leadership fosters well-directed management.”

Policies & Processes

Corporate rules and policies are going to be stress tested by COVID-19. For example, how will COVID-19 impact your remote work policies in the next few months?

Do your policies and processes balance the needs of employer, employee, and community?

Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist at Thoughtworks, writes, “A crisis like this puts stress upon the policies and systems of an organization. If an organization holds too firmly to its regular controls, it limits the effectiveness of its response to the novel situation. But if it lets them all go, it exposes itself to large risks at exactly the time that its capacity to absorb the impacts is weak.”

New policies specific to COVID-19 will need to be created. Create a quick-list to review and processes or policies that need to be reviewed or updated. Below are a few for your team to consider:

Identifying and managing sick employees

Many companies may want to temporarily change their sick policies (for example, requiring symptomatic or exposed individuals to stay home). It may also be appropriate to require testing before work for specific individuals. Workplaces with a high risk of spread should consider self-reporting mechanisms as well.

Remote work

Is your team implementing remote work as an afterthought?

Time to get serious.

Changing how teams interact on a daily basis is a big deal. Executives, IT, and HR teams need to start thinking about how they will improve capabilities for virtual employees, including:

Culture and social events
Remote work training and de-stigmatization of remote work
Remote employee onboarding
Communication and collaboration tools
Documentation/wiki platforms
Project tools (non-technical projects)
Moving paper processes to electronic
Equipment, software, and hardware support

Employers are going to be pressured to offer additional work-from-home opportunities. For some people working from home, there won’t be a choice until a vaccine is found.

Executives should invest time in reviewing other companies’ practices to be able to incorporate successful ones into their own. Otherwise, your company will likely see additional turnover.

Resources to help:

LifeLabs Learning: Complete Remote Work Playbook (Google doc)

Zapier’s guide to working remotely

Gitlab’s 2020 Remote Playbook

Flexible work hours

Schools, daycares, nursing homes, and care facilities are not going to return to normal immediately. Many of your employees are dealing with things they didn’t have to worry about before. They will not have the ability to work a normal schedule until things return to some sense of normalcy.

Begin working on creating and communicating policies around flexible time. Because of the impact of COVID-19, any employers not willing to work with their employees could see a backlash.

Resources to help:

Workable: Employee Flexible Working Policy Example

HR Workload

As with any crisis, HR workload will be temporarily increased. Leaders should make sure that HR doesn’t become overloaded. If HR is overloaded, employees will be left waiting for information that is important to them, their finances, and their health.

Corporate and Personal Travel

Stay-at-home orders have restricted corporate travel to the bare minimum. As those restrictions are lessened, companies will need to decide how to manage travel.

What will be defined as necessary travel?
In what cases will travel be discouraged and/or stopped?
Do people need to report certain personal trips to the company? Will anything be required for people who travel to certain areas during specific dates?

Work events

It is likely, that many companies won’t be able to have large-scale work events for the rest of this year. Has your company considered how that might impact company-wide get togethers?

For a startup or small company, that might require a 5-minute shift in plans. Other companies have teams dedicated to internal events.

In any case, companies should assess events planned and what needs to change. Your 200-person company is not going to be able to have dinner at the Marriott for Christmas for the time being. Things like virtual events can help your employees feel a sense of team and normality while physically isolated.

Physical Space

In the next few months, people will begin returning to physical offices. But, it won’t be an immediate shift. Executives and HR should begin considering creating a return-to-office plan. OSHA has issued guidance for preparing offices for COVID-19.

Questions to address:

When people return to the office, what will expectations be around congregating with other team members?
Will the company tell people to return to an office or can they continue to be remote?
How will the break room and common areas be used safely?

Should you install hands-free doors or door handles at specific locations?
What type of basic behaviors and infection prevention training does your team need?
Does your team have the right cleaning supplies and enough available?
Can your vendor supply enough paper towels, toilet paper, disinfectant, etc.?
How is the office cleaned and disinfected?
How will you handle visitors, and how will you notify them of potential infections?

These questions are important, but they will change based on the latest information we have about COVID-19 and the best ways to combat it. Companies should be keeping up to date with news and the latest practices for managing COVID-19 from OSHA.

What’s next?

In an article from Bain, Marc Berman and Tracy Thurkow write, “The coronavirus has created a moment of truth for every company. Leaders are rightly asking themselves: Are our choices and actions right now reflecting our culture and the purpose and values that define us?”

The impact of COVID-19 will take time to see. But for now, there are a few certainties:

Increased cost of healthcare next round: Covered California (CA’s healthcare marketplace) recently completed a report that stated, “Premium increases in the individual and employer markets for 2021 — which are in the process of being set right now — could be 40 percent or more solely because of COVID-19 costs in the absence of federal action.”
A significant amount of unemployed workers are available for financially healthy companies. There will also be a large number of workers looking who traditionally might not be available.
Long-term impact to the importance of remote work and flexible hours as a future retention and recruiting tool for employees.