Many organisations are feeling tired and loneliness is a key factor in what is making our staff feel tired. We have a global phenomenon where people are lonelier and more exhausted than ever before. So how do you help them?
Are you tired of always being amiable? Always answering calls as the home and work life have merged? Always being “on”? If you are tired, you can bet your staff are too!
My weekly Mastermind Group have been brainstorming this concept and we have come up with a few thoughts or ideas to share with you. Tips to help with is your organisation exhausted?
Tip 1: Create space for people to say no.
This can be pinging back emails at 9pm. Can you talk about the 9-5 culture spilling into home life and how can make sure that people don’t need to feel always on? Just the discussion can set some boundaries and make people feel better.
Tip 2: Ask “what time do you have lunch?”
Simple communication about normalizing breaks and leaving your desk for 30 minutes or an hour can transform their day. Make sure you ask in the right way and the machismo culture doesn’t take over! In France, they have just put into law that you can eat at your desk. How about putting it into organizational culture “law” that says you can’t!
Tip 3: Ask people to write a list
People can feel lonely and it is hard to reach out to people to ask for help. So before they reach the bottom of that energy well, ask you staff to have a list of support people. People they can call without a reason to call. They can be family or friends or colleagues. This list can be a prompt to connect and reduce the exhaustion.
Tip 4: A Zoom Corridor
Workplaces are social places. They allow us to have micro and macro interactions about all sorts of topics. So how do you create these places where chance meetings happen? We suggest a Zoom Corridor.
Like the real workplace corridor, you are only there when you have a 5 minute gap between meetings. It’s random and serendipitous on who you meet in the corridor.
Projects get new inputs, ideas are shared and new connections are forged in the Zoom Corridor!
Tip 5: Be open and offer times for “Call Me and Ask a Question”
We are hidden in our C-Suite ivory towers in normal times but with COVID, it is even more so. How do you get a feel for what is happening out there? We suggest a 30 minute window where your calendar is open and you can have anyone call you.
You may get the office grouch complaining about their pay rise or their targets but at least you have heard them. We think you’ll get more collaboration, more idea sharing and a more productive team!