What is Corona Fatigue?
“I’m done with this now” – I have said it myself and I have heard others say it too. Its been 6 months since Coronavirus gripped the world and almost that long since we were told to work from home. No matter who you are or where you live, this dreadful pandemic has had an impact on your life in some way, shape or form. You may have experienced furlough, or have worked the whole way through trying to balance childcare demands – either way it has been far from ideal.
It may not have all been bad, some may have been able to draw some positives from the situation; ability to work from home, small environmental improvements, opportunity to spend more time with loved ones but for many there is an underlying struggle and regardless of how optimistic you are, some days it just all feels a bit difficult.
I include myself in this by the way; the recruitment industry is not for the faint hearted at the best of times but now more than ever the demands of this business are being felt by all of us that work in this sector. So how do I continue to stay laser focused and keep positive and more importantly, how do I ensure that my loyal and hardworking team are too?
Here are some thoughts and tips that you may find useful;
Celebrate every win
In a challenging time, it is really important to focus on anything positive and one way you can do this is to celebrate every win as a team as this helps to lift morale. Whether it’s just group recognition, a round of applause, a shout out on your team what’s app, maybe even cake or something sparkling (responsibly of course) there are simple, inexpensive ways to celebrate together. What you focus on, you attract, so the more you can focus on the good stuff the better!
Remember how to kick back
As a team we have always liked a team lunch yet for now there are a couple of things standing in the way of visiting our favourite restaurant. The fact that more than 2 households are not able to meet to eat out but also perhaps you don’t want to be too extravagant. There are other ways you can enjoy a combined lunch – you could just down tools and spend some time, collectively and in your social distanced positions eating lunch together or why not do what we did this week and order in! We used the ever growing Deliveroo to bring us the lunch that we fancied! It didn’t break the bank but everyone enjoyed it and importantly, enjoyed it together.
Focus on the actions
Ok so in a tough market, the outcomes and results can feel harder to come by but if you get clear on what you need to do to achieve them, it becomes a whole lot easier. Use the last three months of data to bring you complete, post-Covid numbers and by knowing these and getting clear on your required activities, you can stop focusing purely on the results and just feel confident in your actions. Its like travelling towards a new and unknown destination, you haven’t been there before but have absolute trust that if you follow the directions you will get there – business is no different.
Invest your time in training
Many of us have been here before and worked our way through and out of “recession” and some don’t even allow themselves to believe in the R word at all. So have faith in the fact that we will come through this but there may be people in your teams who have never experienced challenging conditions such as these. These people, whether they acknowledge it or not, will be looking to their leaders to give them the tools and the confidence to get through. You can help them by spending time with them refining their skills, training them and improving performance. You may be finding that you have needed to adapt the way that you approach tasks and client interaction during this time so your team will need support and guidance in this new way of working. This additional development will help keep their mindset positive and relieve some of the pressure they may be feeling.
Gratitude
I have spoken of this before and I think it is so valuable that I am mentioning it again – practising gratitude. Psychologists have proven that gratitude is consistently associated with having more positive emotions and therefore feeling happier overall. Whether you take a few moments in the morning or evening to just think about the things in your life that you are grateful for, or use a journal to help you, repeating this action for some time will genuinely change how you feel. Your brain will automatically seek to find the positives in every situation and at times like these this can make a huge difference. Its something that everyone in the team can be encouraged to do and the benefits significantly outweigh any cost as this is completely free of charge!
Enlist the experts
It is tempting in a downturn to cut back on what you deem to be unnecessary overheads such as external marketing, training or maybe even recruitment agencies and instead do these things yourself or not at all. It has never been so important to stand out from your competition in terms of marketing or ensure that you have the absolute best in terms of business development approaches so surely getting expert help is essential. Taking up your valuable time with things that could be done, most likely more successfully, by someone else could be a false economy so play to your strengths and enlist the best possible partners to give you the greatest chances of success. Of course it is critical to negotiate on the best prices but be careful what you cut out. Keeping my marketing and training providers on board throughout this time has been among the best decisions I have made. They have kept me going at times, given me much needed direction and ensured that I am continuing to move forward positively.
It goes without saying that nobody can feel 100% positive, 100% of the time but hopefully you will be able to use these techniques to help yourself and those that you manage to get back on track when needed.
If you want more time to focus on your day job and that of managing your people and you need to bring in new talent, why not turn to our team of experts to assist you. We will ensure that this is only a positive experience for you.
