After a long week working long hours developing and putting in place safety plans, it was evident that the level of tension was palpable. After all, no one likes to be told what to do, no one likes having rules forced on them even if they‘re for their own good, and no one likes to think about why they are at work when others get to stay home. My boss summed it up nicely when she told us to stop working long hours. “It’s not a sprint. This will be like this till at least the end of April”
How could we expect people to keep coming in if what they were coming in to was tense and full of rules? Especially when we’d shut down some of their fun zone because we couldn’t stick to the 1m rule? Yes you need to take it seriously and put in place safety plans. But if you’re an industry where you’re delivering people’s basic essentials, you want people to keep coming in and realise the service they’re delivering to people in isolation.
So once people are reassured and feel safe , I would say it’s really important to lighten the mood, ease the tension, create an environment of wellbeing to reduce anxiety. Otherwise people are surrounded by a sense of doom and panic. This just does not help.
Other than the usual get-enough-sleep, do some exercise, eat your (frozen) greens advice, I’d say the next best is encouragement and have some fun. No virus is gonna beat us. We’re gonna nail this sucker. My team is still coming in and I want to keep it that way. Other sites aren’t so lucky. I started thanking people for coming in. Handing out little morale boosters (chocolate). Keeping communication lines open, having a good ol’ laugh.
There are about a 1000 coronavirus memes going around, and daft as they are, they are seriously helping. So remember to add laughter to your list of things to stock up on.
Don’t spread the virus, spread the memes.
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