What can you do to help your employees in these times?

Whilst the world we were performing in has changed beyond recognition in a really short space of time, there are still many businesses that are continuing to trade. And for those businesses the well-being and ongoing support they can offer has never been more important. Business life has been turned upside down, and what matters now more than ever is empathy. Whilst there are practical issues about getting work done, there are other more human elements that need consideration. It is this empathy and understanding that builds your employee brand to get the best talent and keep them.

If you are one of those businesses and are now working remotely, Sarah Brewster from Fresh Seed talks you through a few things to consider:

★ Do your employees have the right set up to work from home? Have you helped them think about where they work from, what equipment they may need and how to work without causing themselves injury?

★ Have you considered the juggles people may now be facing and whether logging in for a 9am start and working until 5.30pm like a normal office day, will work? What flexibility can you offer now?

★ How’s the mental health of your employees? In HR we have been talking about Mental Health for a really long time but this subject has now flooded our reality, with anxiety and fear being ever present for many people who have not had a previously diagnosed condition but now find themselves in a state of flux. Do you know how to ask those questions to find out how people are, or do you feel uncomfortable raising these issues?

★ Before we moved to this virtual world, the business world resisted working from home and flexible working with cries that we wouldn’t be able to trust people to be productive, instead fearing they’d use working from home as an opportunity to slack off work or that it would reduce connections and team productivity. So how are you keeping in touch and how do you know if work is still being done? What can you do to map your teams performance and goals?

The good news is that there’s plenty of help out there in the form of guides and technology. If you’d like to talk to us we’re happy to point you towards free guides and the technology available to support you.

As an overview we have guides on: ● Working from home policies ● Working from home tips ● Mental health and wellbeing ● Engagement and productivity - how to keep your employees connected ● Bringing on new employees in these challenging times ● Remote working

We also have technology links with Lumien - the Mental Health survey - and Engagement Multiplier - a tool for mapping engagement across organisations.

Lumien is the future of well-being mapping, specifically around mental well-being. It doesn’t focus purely on diagnosed conditions but helps you analyse how ​all ​ employees are feeling so you can begin to map the impact of your working demands on employee performance. There’s simply nothing better positioned than this to really help you understand how you are faring with your duty of care and how the culture of your organisation is impacting people's ability to do their role. Therefore leading to a reduction in workplace stress which can be time consuming and costly to deal with.

The Engagement Multiplier is one of many tools that maps engagement through pulse surveys. It allows for daily anonymous interactions so staff can feed back the good and the bad and you get a better understanding of team dynamics, and performance. This technology is currently providing a free service which means you can invest in your people without cost to you.

Both pieces of tech will give you a current picture, which in turn will allow you to respond, and improve issues in the here and now. Perhaps now, more so than ever, we need to consider the human side to business management, what actions we take now are vital to the business recovery piece later down the line.

Fresh Seed are an HR and Organisation Design agency, offering you advice across the entire HR function. Please get in touch with sarahb@freshseed.co.uk or 07789 221195 for further advice.