There is a concerning surge of adults in the U.S. who are reportedly struggling with mental health or a substance use issue amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. Though strategies such as social distancing and the use of stay-at-home orders are useful in reducing the spread of the virus, they are also partially responsible for the uptick in isolation and loneliness, which has increased stress and anxiety among almost everyone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The workplace is not immune to the stress, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues of its workforce. Both remote workers and on-site workers are experiencing burnout or struggling with mental health issues as a result of the pandemic. If someone is suffering, their work is too.
As a result, organizational leaders are delivering more mental health and wellness support, and learning and development leaders specifically play a uniquely critical role. Learning leaders are facilitators of change, says Anna Samorukova, chief of learning, change and transformation at Edelweiss Group.
“They can serve as change agents,” she says. “They can create learning that can be exciting, fun and engaging, and it would help people embrace change within their organization.”
Learning how to change
Samorukova has integrated her background in psychology and neuroscience into her current focuses in the L&D space, which are change resilience, agility, transformation and experiential learning. Throughout the pandemic, she has seen many organizations grappling with massive changes.
“The traditional emotional cycle of change suggests that we’re supposed to feel angry,” she says. “[And] we don’t have to feel that way. Yes, there is a reaction, but if we learn how to understand that reaction and how to embrace it, we don’t have to feel anger and denial at all.”
Learning can activate neurons in the brain, she says, so in and of itself, learning is a great way to become more open to change. According to Psychology Today, learning experiences change the “functional circuitry” that brains use to process and remember a specific learning event.
L&D professionals and learning leaders must understand how change is impacting their people so they can create learning from their perspective, Samorukova says; however, at the same time, they should also be able to monitor their own reactions to change, and their ability to stay resilient to change themselves.
Rising to the challenge
During the pandemic, many L&D professionals flipped their learning from in-person to virtual in a short amount of time. Throughout the challenges that COVID-19 has presented globally, L&D teams have remained at the forefront, providing support and resources to their organizations.
At the beginning of the year, senior leaders at Vi — a Chicago-based organization operating 10 continuing care retirement communities across the U.S. — added a new health and wellness tool to their organization’s repertoire of employee benefits: a digital health education platform called LifeSpeak that offers more than 2,300 video training sessions, podcasts, tip sheets and other proprietary content.
One of the most important roles of leaders in HR and learning is supporting mental well-being among their workforce and working to normalize conversations around mental health, says Judy Whitcomb, Vi’s senior vice president of human resources, learning and organizational development.
“Over the last year, we have put a special emphasis on educating and equipping our leaders to build their resilience through interactive, all-leader, virtual sessions with internal and external guest speakers on emotional well-being and resiliency,” Whitcomb says.
In the San Antonio and Southern Texas area, University Health, an academic medical center and network of outpatient health care centers, is also making huge strides in supporting its employees’ health and wellness during the pandemic.
The Center for Learning Excellence, University Health’s learning team, has been heavily involved in daily employee support. “Our department was always one sought out for professional and personal development, but now requests for support have doubled, if not tripled,” says Denise Pruett, CLE’s executive director. “We are now inundated with requests via our inbox, phone calls or office drive-bys for support in building out virtual training, using or recording Webex sessions, development of e-learning — and they need it done yesterday.”
University Health has also added various new employee benefits in response to the challenges its workers are facing due to the pandemic, including free counseling, child care support, a call center and several new types of support systems for its front-line and at-home employees. Every day, a team member from CLE participates in daily support huddles on dedicated COVID-19 patient care floors, Pruett says.
Making it their own
Organizations across various industries have adopted similar health and wellness initiatives. In Vermont, several employers piloted health and wellness programs over the past year. In April, 71 of those businesses will be recognized for their adaptations to employee wellness initiatives at a Governor’s Award for Excellence in Worksite Wellness ceremony. Resume builder company Resume.io is offering an expansion of mental health benefits, such as virtual counseling and subscriptions to mental health support apps.
In her experience, Samorukova says successful wellness programs and initiatives can be managed by the users themselves, which gives them a sense of choice and creativity, all while being in control. “Let them be and explore it,” she says.
For Vi leadership, a health and wellness tool that was on-demand, mobile-friendly and easy for users checked several of their boxes. LifeSpeak was also complementary to the organization’s existing wellness benefits, Whitcomb says.
“Equally important for us was the ability for our employees to customize their experience and access in-depth content from acclaimed authors, medical professionals and professors,” she says. “Lastly, it was critical the platform we selected offered resources in Spanish to support our many team members that speak English as a second language.”
Pruett says the employee benefits, workplace support and teamwork they’ve adopted at University Health amid the pandemic are not short-term solutions. They have become part of their organization’s culture and were created to address employee unease, stress and exhaustion in a holistic workplace approach.
“Whether it’s a workgroup on trauma-informed care, a department consultation, an e-learning module or a communication from the C-suite, it is vital to connect the pieces and the players to create fundamental change in the way we think of supporting our workforce’s mental health and how we ‘do’ that support,” Pruett says.
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