'It goes back to investing in leadership and... trying to create a culture which is compelling and adaptive,' says Canadian HR leader
The outside world is in a volatile state, and employees are dragging that reality through the office door every day. Wars, climate disasters, political fights, human rights violations, plane crashes, and industry shocks have turned background noise into constant disruption, and it’s not just affecting employees with close ties to these events.
Mark Edgar, Chief People Officer at industrial services and equipment company Wajax, believes that what’s going on in the world means it isn’t business as usual for his organization [given] the potential risks to employee morale and productivity.
“It's all incremental, and with the most recent situations with global wars, it's kind of layered on top of an already pretty full agenda that people are dealing with,” he says. “A bunch of those things will be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back — and that's going to be an individual situation, depending on people's capacity and resilience, how much they're impacted by those things.”
Edgar notes that the shift to hybrid work was meant to give people more control over their lives but, instead, it has often stripped away connection when employees need it most, particularly in times like this when there’s a lot of negative news in the world. “I don't think you can deal with them in isolation, you have to think about them as an overall system in a way and think about what you’re doing to support people in the right way,” he says.
Acknowledging, not ignoring, events
Diana Valler, Chief Human Resources Officer at travel company TravelBrands, is faced with a direct link between global events and day-to-day operations due to the nature of her business. Valler says that world events are “100 per cent” affecting her people.
For Valler, cheerful corporate messaging is useless when staff wake up to yet another headline involving their destinations, their aircraft, or their customers. “So you know it and you sense it and the way to handle this, it's really communicating about it,” she says. “We say, ‘We heard about the news and I hope you're okay. In case you need to take a day, please do.’”
That requires more listening than talking from leadership, as well as being visible and present, adds Valler. “Encourage the leaders to make sure they listen even more,” she says. She reminds managers that “you never know what's in their home. You never know what's in their hearts. So be intentional about checking on people as often as you can.”
It means hard work on resilient leadership and culture rather than one-off wellness days, according to Edgar.
“It goes back to investing in leadership and investing in making sure that you, as an HR team, can focus on the right things and adding the right value,” he says. “And making sure that you're really trying to create a culture which is quite compelling and adaptive to all these things that are going on.”
Supporting psychological safety and resilience
While individual resilience may vary for employees, Edgar is clear that organizations can’t completely shrug off responsibility when the outside world overwhelms people.
“Psychological safety isn't a given, but it has to be the organization's responsibility to create [psychologically safe] environments,” he says. “We have 104 sites across Canada at Wajax, so our ability to make sure that all of those are operating in a psychologically safe way every day is limited to lagging indicators around things like retention, responses to engagement scores, overall business results, and absences — but you respond accordingly.”
Edgar believes that employees rightly have an expectation that they're going to work in a psychologically safe as well as physically safe environment where they can do their best every day, and recognizing outside negative factors that can affect overall wellbeing.
At Valler’s TravelBrands, global events have doubly affected morale, as the company has absorbed financial hits from things beyond its control, including disruptions in Cuba that forced the company to return large volumes of bookings worth millions of dollars. When stress in the organization is that high, it affects everyone, she says.
Valler says her team’s response was to push support directly to the front line. “We partnered with [our third-party benefits provider] who has a plan for our EAP, and they’re very conscious about it,” she says. To make sure the message landed, the provider held in-person and virtual sessions to share mental health support solutions, she says.
Know your industry, know your people
Valler sees global volatility as becoming harder for employees and organizations to shut out and continue business as usual. “You need to check the pulse of what's actually happening, if it's affecting your industry, your people or potentially their families, be very aware of where they’re coming from,” she says. “Know your people and exactly how to react to them, and customize your care to the level of the organization and the industry that you have.”
Edgar believes HR has to find the medium ground on addressing any morale issues with employees.
“You can't be too complacent, but equally you can't overreact to different situations as well,” he says. “Dynamically, just track these things and speak to people at all sorts of different levels, and use it to get a kind of temperature gauge in the organization —I don't think you can factor in the extremes, because you have people who are super-happy, super-engaged, super-productive, and then you have people who think you're the worst company ever — and neither are true, it's the majority in the messy middle that you really need to understand.”
Valler recognizes that HR has to ensure staff meet the operational needs of the organization but should check the paths of people every day. “It's very important to make sure they’re present and motivated,” she says. “As a CHRO, you always have to have a comprehensive plan — you create those contingency plans, which are really essential to make sure that the business continues.”
This article is part of our Monthly Spotlight series, which in March focuses on mental health. Full coverage can be found here.
