4 Ways Workplaces Can Support Their Essential Staff

1. Keep front-line staff safe

Work injuries cost about $170 billion in 2019! Those are pre-pandemic numbers.

So, what are you doing as a company owner to keep people safe? Do you have a safety plan? An ongoing safety program? A safety officer or someone dedicated or assigned to monitor and improve safety?

Nothing happens by accident, except accidents.

2. Get serious about mental health

A 2020 survey revealed that 53% of adults in Europe were suffering from worry and stress due to the pandemic. Imagine what your front-line workers felt? We promise many of your employees already struggled with mental health issues, and bearing the brunt of responsibility by being on the front line has only added to it.

A 2017 email from Madalyn Parker to her boss, in which she explained she needed a few days off to focus on her mental health, went viral. Why?

Because we all recognise the need.

Getting serious about employee mental health might mean giving employees a day off as a mental health day. It might mean offering free professional counselling to employees who want to use it.

Mental health isn’t just something you think about in terms of burnout and how it costs you productivity and turnover. It’s about caring about the well-being of your essential employees with a keystone function. If they crumble, so do we.

3. Pay them well

Sadly, most front-line workers tend to earn lower wages in comparison to other workers. That’s completely backward.

We define them as incredibly important. We assign duties to them that the rest of the population relies on. We put them in harm’s way or ask them to perform their work when times are tough.

And we pay them less?

Too many essential workers watched others spend a year working from home via the internet while they could not have such an option. Being told you’re “essential” without seeing it backed up by action and pay is hollow and hurtful.

Show your front-line staff you can’t do without them by putting it in their paycheck and benefits.

4. Improve how you communicate

Poor employee communication is expensive for business owners, not just in the dollar amount because of mistakes or turnover, but also in efficiency and morale. If you’re not confident in your communication abilities, you have a couple of options:

Survey employees about how it’s going. Find a coach, mentor, or class to learn to improve. Communication is worth the effort always to be understanding and improving. It doesn’t matter how great you think you are as a communicator; there is always room for improvement.

The fact that you’re making an effort to improve is a signal to your front-line employees that they matter.

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