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Battling Pandemic Blues: How Managers Can Rally the Troops

Work can feel tough for everyone right now, but the right thoughtful gestures from the boss can give employees the boost they need

It could be a project gone wrong, a key colleague’s departure, or just life these days. How are you supposed to rally the troops when you haven’t seen them in person since spring?

How can you read body language and catch fleeting facial expressions when colleagues are distilled down to Brady Bunch squares on a Zoom call? Instead, problems seem to fester in our disconnected network of kitchen table offices and Slack chats.

These are strange times, replete with burnout, distraction and personal hardships, especially with the adrenaline that marked the early part of the pandemic long gone.

“We’ve moved through fear to this period of endless uncertainty.”

Human-resources professionals ranked maintaining employee morale as their most difficult Covid-19 issue in a recent survey by XpertHR, an online provider of compliance guidance.

Idea #1: Ms. Bates says the first step in combating employee malaise is simply listening. One of her clients began conducting virtual skip-level meetings, in which a leader connects with her direct report’s direct report. On one call, a young professional confided that working from her bed was hurting her back, prompting the executive to help her find a small desk for her studio apartment.

“That’s half the battle, just to give people the opportunity to be heard,” Ms. Bates says.

She also recommends acknowledging that times are tough and being open with employees about the realities of this year: Bonuses might be scarce, promotions paused. Remind your team this is just a moment in time, even if it’s a difficult one, she says.

Idea #2: Laura Baldwin, president of the Sebastopol, Calif.-based company, says transparency helped ease worries and maintain connections between the scattered workforce. She sent several notes to the whole staff, laying out what was happening and why, and invited employees to submit questions about the layoffs and the business anonymously. For two hours, she tackled the queries during an all-company online meeting in April. wsj.com