Courtesy
It has not been all doom since the pandemic started.
We have become more vocal and responsive to matters that are close to our hearts like wellbeing, personal life, values, beliefs, family life, work-life balance, rest, and others.
This has brought about many talks about employers and managers doing everything possible to give their employees unbeatable experiences in the workplace: lending an ear, offering care packages, streamlining communication, keeping up with employment laws, recognizing burnout and preventing it, revising policies to make them more accommodating of employees’ needs, and others.
While all that is essential, such topics but for managers and HRs have not been tackled to the level best. The scale seems one-sided. Whether you are a HR professional or a manager, we know that the job can be quite tiring sometimes and that you are not exempted from challenges that such as burnout and stress.
In this article, we are here to prove that you are not a forgotten lot by offering useful tips on how to maintain your wellbeing.
- Get a good handle of your work
How does your work day look like?
Which activities take up most of your time?
Which ones take the least?
A leader wears many hats and it can be quite tempting to say that you do ‘everything’ if asked about your job.
As a result, one might assume there is no need of planning and go into the day ready to tackle whatever comes along. This should not be your go-to strategy for a number of reasons. One, if matters emerge at once, your mind will be torn all over and there will be a high possibility of losing focus and getting overwhelmed quickly. Two, determining the level of importance of tasks becomes a challenge. Third, it can be very hard to know whether there is any progress or not if you go into the job without a plan.
Even if you are managing a hundred people, if you look closely, you will notice that the jobs fall into some main categories. If you go ahead and estimate the level of commitment (in terms of people and effort) needed in each job, you will be a step ahead of understanding how to manage.
Use platforms that enable you to keep up with the progress of each task.
- Understand your team
Who is the best person for a particular project in a particular department?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of each department in the company?
Managers are mainly known as the problem solvers and majority of the challenges they face arise from employees failing in some way; by not meeting the quality or beating the deadlines. This can be for a number of reasons: disintegration in the team, inadequate resources, minimal support, wrong placement, etc.
Whether you are the manager of a department or the entire company, make an effort of understanding the strengths of your team and allocate duties in the best manner possible. We will emphasize this using an example of one manager who noticed that the performance of two employees was decreasing and most of the time they were not at their working stations. This of course affected the workflow and pushed the manager to a point of micromanaging everyone and letting the employees go.
But as we mentioned in our previous article, micromanaging hurts the company’s performance.
It didn’t take him long to realize that the two employees were exchanging roles. The manager received a word that the accountant had wanted to transfer to the creative design and marketing department while the marketing manager had wanted to shift to finance. When the manager finally took a chance on them as trial, he noticed a huge difference in their levels of productivity.
We are not saying that you shuffle your employees or set long meetings to know the personality, goals, and aspirations of every employee. Rather, understanding their key strengths can make a huge difference how best to manage your talent and the outputs, especially in this age where people are taking up careers contrary to what they studied in universities.
- Automate repetitive tasks
There are activities that occur frequently and do not seem to take much time, either on you or your team such as responding to frequently asked questions. Automating these tasks will allow you and your team to focus on activities that bring more rewards.
- Keep up with workplace hacks
As a leader, you will always have a lot of data to compute for different purposes. The good thing is that the internet is quite resourceful when it comes to life-saving hacks.
Social media platforms are not solely for interacting. Many people are now rising to show their expertise either for free or at affordable fees; so be on the lookout. It can be anything from how to clean up volumes of data within a few hours rather than days to shortcuts, but the skill can help you save hundreds of hours every year.
- Designate care package for executives
Employers and managers have been urged to designate care packages for their employees and challenge the myths around mental health and wellbeing in the best way possible. Many have gone ahead to do so by introducing hybrid working arrangements, buying premium online meditation services, introducing 4-day work weeks, flexible working times, recreational activities, offering mental health benefits, and opening discussions for health and wellbeing.
What is shocking is that some employers are not putting as much effort into their wellbeing. In the end, we are hearing of employees who are in a good state of mind with good work-life balance versus employers who are on the verge of burnout.
Sure, it can be quite hard for managers to implement some of the tips such as starting the workday at 8:00 am and ending it at 5:00pm and getting a support system, but when you realize the role of wellbeing in the stability of the company, you will be motivated to use the resources you are investing in.
- Learn more about wellness
As we mentioned earlier, you are not exempted from stress, fatigue, personal problems that can swell to affect your concentration at work, and other negative emotions.
One thing to note is that the world expects managers to be ahead of everyone when it comes to recognizing change and taking the appropriate action. That is not always the case.
When it comes to matters such as ill health, especially mental, the manifestations differ. This means that without a proper understanding of how they look appear, wellness resources at your disposal might look like waste.
Related posts: What to do if employees open up about their mental health struggles.
Effective tips on how to manage diversity in the workplace.
Last words,
As more perspectives of work and wellbeing emerge, there will be always be requests on areas that leaders need to invest more in. Whether you implement the strategies immediately or after a while, their overall result will be determined by your health status. If you are mentally and emotionally healthy, then every decision will show that. So start investing in your wellbeing