The 5 Pillars to Lower and Prevent HumanDebt™ That Your People Strategy Must Have

Last week I wrote an article for the other newsletter and my inbox exploded with reactions. It was entitled “Let’s Be Honest, Nobody’s Fine” and it spoke about the fact that, while we are all trying our very best, the truth is we are far from recouped and all right following the last few nightmarish years.

What struck me in the stories I received in my inbox has been how shared the feeling and yet how different the experience was. Invariably the reaction seems to have been “OMG YES! So much this, I can so relate because...” and then, disconcertingly but not shockingly in hindsight, the reasons were never the same. Sure there were themes - burnout, lack of resilience, frightening changes, historical enterprise-caused pain, bad leadership, etc but like everything else with the pandemic, in the world of work too, the commonality is that of the bewilderment, loss and fear not of exact identical experience as we each experienced it in our own way.

So many of us so desperately want to not be a bother and simply want to get on with it all and jump back into the saddle that it increases the pressure when we try and it proves unrealistic. What happened to us all collectively, in different ways and with different degrees, has been too monumental to not process and heal from.

There is of course much talk about all this everywhere and there’s no company that isn’t doing some things - some focus on mental health resources being democratised, some are piloting a 4-day-week, etc but I can’t help but feel all this is just scratching the surface as we need a lot more. We need:

Empathy for each other. Deep compassion. For those around us and ourselves. Any time we can cut ourselves and those around us slack, we should do so. Any time we can believe the best of each other, we ought to. Any time we can afford to really go through the mental exercise of putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we should. Any time we need to show we empathically comprehend what others are going through, it is imperative that we not only feel it, but communicate it because that is what will break through each of our individual self-imposed isolation policy where we simply didn’t want to be a burden to our teammates, or, worse, be the only one “who hasn’t gotten over it still” and therefore be what moves us forward once we do breakthrough.