Covid-19 how to help your employees

Published on June 9, 2020 9:49 am

Considering the impact of Covid-19

Many of the lessons from this pandemic will be forgotten, as with past ones and this is because human nature tends to focus on other more desirable initiatives.

We have learnt a lot from our own mistakes and we will endeavour to put these to good use in the future.

What follows are a few reminders that may be useful.

What we know about people

  • People prefer to avoid the effort of thinking
  • Over-confidence makes people take dangerous risks
  • Fear makes people paranoid and good decisions more difficult
  • A high desire for control makes people aggressive or passive-aggressive
  • Covid-19 has revealed 4 types of people, afraid, aggressive, over-confident, calm (rare)

What we know about employees

  • Good communication is not always easy for employees
  • Fear and uncertainty can make good people make bad decisions
  • Feeling under-valued will not stop good people from doing their best, abuse will
  • Purpose gives people meaning to their work and motivates them (sometimes in extreme ways)
  • The return to work and ’performance’ is going to be a joy for some and a motivational challenge for others

What we know about employers

  • Employers will make change happen
  • Good change needs good people on-side and committed
  • Past experience always affects the commitment of their employees
  • Employers that have the best people skills have massive competitive advantage
  • Some businesses will thrive, some will survive and some will fail because of inevitable change

What we know about customers

  • Forgiveness for bad service does not last
  • They don’t care about you, they care about their needs
  • What are seen as non-essentials can get dropped quickly
  • The smartest things to do are not always seen as the right thing to do
  • Good communication at the right time can positively influence their decisions

What we know about survival and value

Competitive forces mean that retaining good employees and good customers driving revenue up and cost ratios down greatly depends on people.

Employers that have the best people skills have massive competitive advantage. 

This PDF provides a summary with some tools.