Investment in mental health, continued enforcement and keeping childcare centres open are among the recommendations put forward by the Chamber of Commerce to help the workforce focus on wellness and remain resilient during the Covid-19 pandmic.
The recommendations form part of a policy document drafted by the Chamber’s Health & Wellness committee. It tackles the the new ways in which Covid-19 has contributed to stress at the workplace, by offering best practices and policy recommendations to both employers and government alike.
It found that employers were faced with several concerns, the greatest being the fear of the unknown, not knowing how long it would take or even if the situation would ever go back to normal. “Over time it became clearer that an extended period of ‘a new normal’ was a reality.”
Immediately, and where possible, several employers changed their employees shifts to reduce the possibility of contagion, resorted to remote working or working from home to ensure business continuity as much as possible, all at increased cost. This, however, also brought about further challenges such as increased stress, especially for management, within companies and response to stress also became a key feature which needed to be channelled positively.
The element of social disconnection also impacted the workforce, especially those living alone and younger employees, making office days a treat and making it harder to maintain social distancing measures. As a result of such changes, productivity was impacted, some reported increased productivity whereas others reported a decline. Challenges relating to extra precautions, regular sanitising and work design cost a lot of extra management time and money and these were also highlighted as difficulties to face during this time.
Individual challenges
Most employees reported feeling overwhelmed. The fear of contracting COVID-19 and ending up in self-quarantine is a very strong fear, especially among the older generation and those most vulnerable. The younger generation on the other hand feared infecting those most vulnerable and found it very difficult not to meet friends and spend most of their time with their families.
Participants also reported a surge in personal problems, that ended up being brought to work and impacting productivity.
There is now a blurring of lines between work and home life, especially with remote working, with some employees finding it hard to disconnect and being overworked, other employees finding it more difficult to remain engaged in their work and employers and co-workers finding it hard to trust.
Moreover, the strain posed with increasing numbers of employees testing positive for Covid-19 and even more employees suddenly being put into quarantine, increased pressures on co-workers and management, resulting in burnout.
Another strong challenge posed was with child-minding and home-schooling by working parents especially in situations where mothers ended up having to either leave their jobs to cope or reduce their hours to stay at home and be with their children.
Recommendations
One of the key recommendations for the government is to increase awareness and close links with the Covid-19 Public Health Response Team.
“Businesses must be given, and themselves seek, more training and understanding of contact tracing and social distancing measures at work. This will reduce lost days in the event of one of their employees or their family members contracting COVID-19 or being put into quarantine. The aim must always be to reduce contact between staff members and so reduce the numbers of infections and quarantined employees. The COVID response team showed great interest in setting up links with individual companies and this should be applauded and taken up by Chamber members.”
Government and the MCCAA specifically can assist by giving organisations information and support including templates for incorporating COVID-19 related measures including mental health assessments into mandatory risk assessment questionnaires.
The Chamber also proposed a joint body between government and Opposition in order not to give the public mixed messages.
The relatively positive experience with keeping schools and childcare centres open must continue. Closing schools creates more stress on families and in turn on industry.
The Government should continue to incentivise businesses to go digital and must continue to provide the right incentives to do so, such as through the ‘Re-engineering and Transforming’ scheme organised in collaboration with The Malta Chamber.
It also said that the much-needed investment in the infrastructure in this area needs to be prioritised. Employers should also be incentivised to purchase EAP (Employee Assistance Programme) support for their staff or other psychologist services as should budgets for NGOs such as Richmond Foundation.
Lastly, it stressed on the need for enforcement of current measures.
“The requirement for limits on persons congregating seems to be be flouted openly. Many resent the fact that while they are not meeting family members and investing in keeping their businesses safe, others are disregarding rules with impunity. More presence of the various enforcing bodies would be very welcome.”