As we begin to emerge from lockdown restrictions, there’s much talk around the new normal. After more than 12 months of seemingly ever-changing rules and regulations, and despite a brief hiatus of something that passed for a bit of normal last summer, it’s no surprise that living with such uncertainty for such a long time has taken a real mental toll on people. Who even knows what normal is anymore?
Interestingly, it seems that although we appear to be over the worst of the pandemic and restrictions in the UK, the lack of clarity about the future can feel even harder to live with than those initial few weeks and months of lockdown.
At LionHeart, we’ve seen an increase of around 15% in people contacting us to ask for counselling over the past few months alone. And a large proportion of those surveyors contacting us for a different reason, on the face of it – perhaps with a request for legal advice or financial support – also turn out to be grappling with underlying issues of stress, anxiety or depression for which they go on to receive counselling.
It feels as though we are only just beginning to see the true extent of the impact of the pandemic, combined with people’s fears and worries for the future.
Lack of clear signals
The biggest reason – by far – that RICS professionals are contacting LionHeart right now is to do with their jobs, in one way or another. While we are still hearing concerns about job security, furlough and redundancy that are causing huge amounts of anxiety, we are also hearing from many people who feel really anxious about returning to the office or workplace – or who aren’t receiving clear signals from their bosses about what the future looks like for them.
People are hearing news from the likes of British Airways, HSBC and Nationwide that is all about agile and hybrid ways of working, but they’re also hearing from voices such as Goldman Sachs that have very different messages.
Fundamentally, I think that people need clarity – and we need to see more meaningful discussions in the workplace about future expectations.
If employees are expected back in the office, then they need time to plan that. For many, childcare is still a challenge and the prospect of school class and year group bubbles closing is still a very real threat.
Conversely, if hybrid working is here to stay then people need that news in a timely way, too – so that they can plan their new normal, or perhaps even work out which of their new lifestyle habits they can keep.
Senior leaders may well be in the cohorts who have already received their vaccines – but they need to bear in mind that they are largely making decisions for groups yet to benefit from vaccines. Commuting, shared spaces and interacting with people are all things that are causing concern at the moment and, if these concerns aren’t taken on board by employers, we may well find that we simply lurch from one wellbeing challenge – in the form of working from home and lockdown restrictions – to another.
Act with empathy
As a champion of wellbeing for the surveying profession, LionHeart would ask leaders to do what they can to move forward with empathy. Some ways they can try to do this are:
- Give clarity. Tell people when you intend to make decisions. If decisions are delayed, say so and give a revised date. Even better, ask staff to feed into that decision-making process.
- Give support. Remind people of the help that’s available – employee assistance programmes, private medical providers and benevolent funds like LionHeart all have an important role in maintaining wellbeing in what has been, and continues to be, a time of great change.
- Give information. Tell your people about the changes in the office that have made it safer. A video tour could be all that’s required to reassure someone.
- Give flexibility. Realise that returning to commuting and office-based days is a huge shift after an entire year and more of working at home. If you are able to, provide some flexibility on start and end times and a slow reintroduction of office-based days.
- Give understanding. For every worker who’s ready to skip back to the office come this summer, desperate for the anchor of a physical workplace and in-person contact with colleagues, understand there will be another for whom the prospect is a daunting one that fills them with untold stress.
LionHeart will be running a series of free webinars to mark Mental Health Awareness Week all week from 10 May. They include mental health awareness and ways to improve mental wellbeing, as well as conversation-style events with their mental health ambassadors, all practising surveyors with experience of mental health issues. Details and booking can be found here.
Juliet Smithson is head of operations at LionHeart
