Stop Post-Pandemic Denial - Empower the Human Work

As promised last week I am picking up the “state of us post pandemic” once again because we are nowhere better and it’s now officially “a few years down the line”. Beware this will be an up-in-arms article in the vein of the “Nobody’s OK FFS” ones of a few weeks ago and that’s because we have to talk about it again. I find it appalling that we are still here and the crisis is deepening and it worries me that with the extreme economical hardship we may be facing ahead (ironically some of which can be easily attributed to this very state of affairs) we will again deem the human crisis in the workplace as non-priority.

Far more unproductive than they should be or that we can afford

Why do we need to talk about it again? Because we do precious little about it other than expect it to magically and quietly take care of itself in the background. Which, let's face it, will never happen.  We're in denial. We don't want to face up to the enormity of the job. We are still hoping despite the data and the overwhelming body of evidence that "it's not that bad".

“Oh but that’s not true, I saw 100 articles about burnout and one just yesterday from HBR packed full of advice on how to increase your resilience and combat most of the ailments above” I hear you say. This is interestingly telling - the article in question was written in 2019. While it became LinkedIn-viral no one in the comments dissecting it and praising it, stopped to point that out.

What possible value does a general “be kind to yourself and set boundaries” type of advice from the “before times” have? How will it speak to this insanely unprecedented new reality where we function knowing that most of what we came to rely on life wise can easily be thrown up in the air at any time? When we saw the true nature of VUCA (VUCA, short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, used to be a trendy management term about the same time as the article and is really just a catchall for “Hey, anything can happen!”)? When we have had to hold up the fort and pretend we can carry on as if nothing is happening when indeed we were going through life-and-death limit situations? When we felt so much and none of it was verbalised. When we mourned, we feared, we hoped, we survived and we did it all while still writing code and answering emails and that dichotomy, (akin to those ploughing along work in war zones such as our colleagues in the Ukraine) needs recognition and processing before it will stop reflecting in our state of mind and performance today.