How To Reduce Your Employee’s Stress and Anxiety During COVID-19

Reducing your employee's stress and anxiety during COVID-19 should be the ultimate goal of businesses. Working from home has been the new normal in Kenya. Although businesses have started opening up,  many organizations are still working from home. There is a lot of uncertainty and questions among employees. Is my job safe? Will productivity be the same? What if the safety guidelines and protocols fail?. As a result, the level of anxiety, and stress have heightened in employees due to the uncertainty of the pandemic.

How to engage your stressed employees during COVID-19

1. Encourage Communication

As a manager, encourage open communication with your employees. Provide a platform where your employees can easily communicate with you. For example, have one on one meetings with your employees and ask them if they have any challenges they are facing and how you can help them. Your employees will appreciate and feel heard hence reducing employee stress and anxiety during COVID-19.

2. Encourage Employees Self-Care

Adopting to working from home has left employees feeling overwhelmed, even more, overworking themselves as there is no particular schedule to follow. Encourage your employees to take breaks throughout the day.  Also, give them tips on how to take care of their wellbeing while working at home. For example, taking a lot of water, and working out. This decreases your employee stress and anxiety during COVID-19.

3. Provide the necessary tools

As an employer, you have the responsibility to provide the necessary tools to your employees so that they can get work done especially if they are working from home. For instance, ensure they have access to the internet, laptops, suitable working areas, and any other tools that they need to get the work done. With the necessary tools, employees can easily do their work and increase their productivity and that of the organization.

4. Conduct interviews

As the economy is slowly opening up in the country, conduct interviews, or send questionnaires to your employees to understand what they expect if they return to the office. For example, ask them, would they like to go back to the office, what do they like about working from home, what can the business do to make their work easier?. The questionnaire helps you understand what they are thinking about. It promotes transparency and above all, employees feel more involved hence reducing their stress and anxiety during COVID-19.

What’s More

Stressed and anxious employees affect your business negatively.  Be clear and provide guidance to your employees. Employers should check-in with their employees regularly to ensure they have everything they need to get the work done effectively and safely. This helps in reducing your employee’s stress and anxiety during COVID-19.Effective management of employees starts with having the proper solutions.

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