Don’t Just Survive, Thrive

An Ask the Expert feature with Ceridian

Beth Lundholm explains how managers need to push forward despite the financial crisis.

Right now you need optimal performance from each and every employee, yet fear and stress caused by economic woes can seriously hamper health and productivity in the workplace. As a manager, you may worry about losing your own job. You may also be coping with the difficult tasks of carrying out layoffs and cutting costs. The workday comes with distractions, malaise, missed opportunities, forgotten deadlines and average results. As stressful days weigh on you and your employees, health, productivity and attendance suffers. 

How can you turn yourself and your team around? Look to your employee assistance program (EAP) and health and wellness programs for the support and guidance you need. You likely used your EAP to help employees who were let go cope with their loss, now you need to use your EAP to help with your remaining team. Not only do you need to lead with less, but you need to refocus and motivate your surviving workforce quickly in ways that will remove obstacles, reduce stress and create a vision of strength for the future.

Boosting your team’s resilience and minimizing the toll on you and your employees is something that you can do with the help of your EAP. Here are some ideas for helping you and your employees move forward:

• Help employees see the positive side of change. Start by building a positive culture of gratitude and strength. Something as simple as stating, “thanks for a job well done”, or, “we will get through this”, can go a long way toward focusing on the positive outcomes and opportunities that change can bring. 
• Build an environment of trust and communication channels will become more open and transparent. For example, when you empower your team to make decisions and demonstrate that you don’t need to be copied on every email, you develop a strong foundation of trust.
• Be available as a manager and make sure that your employees understand that they are free to come to you with questions, concerns or ideas.
• Help your employees regain a sense of control by finding ways that they can produce excellent results fairly quickly. This might look like a team brainstorming meeting to explore ways to cut costs or to boost productivity with a follow up meeting to put those ideas into practice.
• Formulate strategies for dealing with the impacts of change with your peers, other managers and with employees. For example, two departments could equally share a resource with a similar skill set following a workforce reduction. Perhaps a labor-intensive report is no longer needed or could be created less frequently.
• Remind yourself and your team of challenges you’ve successfully faced together in the past. The current financial crisis probably isn’t your first managerial challenge, and it probably won’t be your last. Talking about past challenges and the successful outcomes will help boost morale.
• Stay mentally and physically healthy and encourage your team to do the same. Watch for signs of stress in yourself and in the people you manage, and take advantage of resources to learn strategies for addressing these issues before they become limiting factors to your team’s success.
• Nurture your own resilience. Give yourself time to get rejuvenated and renewed so that you can be a positive role model for your team.

Much is currently being asked of your employees — and of you. Supporting employees with resources for coping with stress will help build individual and team resiliency. Taking advantage of the same resources for yourself will help you stay strong and succeed as a manager. Use this crisis as an opportunity to turn to your EAP and health and wellness resources. Armed with the tools to transform these events into your own personal success, your organization’s success will naturally follow.

Beth Lundholm, Ceridian LifeWorks Manager of Management Services, is a licensed psychologist with expertise in addiction and behavioral health. With over 20 years of experience as a clinician and manager in various industries and private practice, she offers knowledge and creative leadership in responding to challenging workplace issues.