(Editor’s note: This marks the first of a three-part series by Ken Greger, partner – Global Travel & Hospitality Practice, August Leadership, New York City, on the importance of an emotional recovery plan as hoteliers bounces back from COVID-19)
Thanks to safety protocols and global distribution of the coveted vaccines, we are finally seeing light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel and getting closer to shedding our world of this killer virus and its variants. With that encouragement we have begun planning for the post-COVID recovery. Clearly, plans will be crafted for economic recovery, but bear in mind that we must plan for the Emotional Recovery as well.
“Even when the pandemic is brought under control, grief, anxiety and depression will continue to affect people and communities.”
—António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations
The hospitality industry certainly isn’t immune. So, the organizations that take this seriously and plan for the Emotional Recovery will ultimately thrive. Don’t delay – it’s imperative to immediately take an honest look at your company’s culture and consider the pros and cons that the pandemic has laid bare. Since the C-suite has also experienced the stress and emotion imposed by COVID-19, all the more reason to remember how that felt moving forward, as the journey was likely harder on your team members. Proceed with a sense of urgency to truly understand how the very pulse of your organization has changed because of COVID-19.
In preparing this three-part article, I reached out to Alexander Lovell, Director – Research & Data Science at O.C. Tanner, to provide real data as to how company culture and workers have been impacted. Read this note from Lovell carefully:
In the midst of extraordinary innovation and resilience, a few concerning trends emerged: a disconnection, even a divide, between the essential workers and the remote workers; a severe decline in mental health, paired with a corresponding increase in workplace burnout; and individual realizations about industry and career prospects. While many leaders are tempted to move their organizations toward the old “normal,” they must be prepared to accept that the normal we were used to can no longer exist in the face of the transformation that occurred throughout the past year.
From week 1 to week 3 of our COVID-19 study, the number of individuals experiencing depression jumped from 51% to 60.6%. Multiple factors can compound the effects as well. For example, employees that self-identify as a minority had a 20.63% greater incidence of depression. Those who felt their organization had decreased in transparency had an 18.95% greater chance of depression. Finally, and not surprisingly, employees facing severe exhaustion had a 93% greater incidence of depression. Becoming overwhelmed with too many negative emotions can certainly be unhealthy. It can also lead to undesired results for the organization. We uncovered several measures that illustrate how employee depression can lead to adverse outcomes. Here are some of the most compelling:
- 112% increase in fearfulness at the organization
- 65% decrease in engagement
- 18% increase in the employee’s intention to leave the organization
- 67% decrease in employee Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Unfortunately, this trend worsened, and led to increased employee burnout. In our 2021 Global Culture Report, we were able to attribute a 15% increase in burnout due to COVID-19 workplace strain. When organizations had a suboptimal culture, burnout increased 81%.
Burnout was felt differently depending on where you worked. We found physical burnout more prevalent in essential worker populations, while emotional burnout was significantly more prevalent in remote working populations. This disparity has important implications for organizations moving forward, as organizational initiatives must be tailored to address the circumstances of each individual population.
This data is quite telling and is a billboard for leadership to take notice.
In reviewing the past year with Bill Walshe, CEO of Viceroy Hotel Group, he recalled the early days of lockdown:
I tried to control everything and put plans in place to get people back to work, and I became very frustrated that I couldn’t fulfill the obligations that I’d been making to people. And then I realized, I’m a smart guy surrounded by smarter people and, together, we’re an incredibly smart team. But I also realized that we’re not smart enough to outsmart a pandemic, and we can’t come up with a vaccination program on our own, so I stopped trying to figure all of that stuff out, recognized the circumstances that we were in and tried to figure out how best we could be there for each other.
Watch for Part 2 of this series tomorrow, with the focus turning to leading with more empathy.