Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

Middle managers and leaders are central points of contact for people returning to work and their roles are particularly important as the pandemic continues but people return to work. However, it is vital that managers have the tools to support their own well-being as well as their team's, and that they have adequate support from senior leadership. Since COVID, middle managers are being asked to make hundreds of daily decisions in a time of uncertainty. They have the responsibility of sharing and promoting decisions and strategies that may be ambiguous or that they even disagree with. Consider:

• Conversations between middle and senior leaders that helps to remove as many unknowns as possible through clear guidelines. Ensure managers know what they are (and are not) responsible for in terms of decision-making and providing wider support
• Whether there is sufficient wellbeing support for all staff to relieve middle managers of additional roles. Ensure managers are clear on available support networks in the organization and what they offer e.g. occupational health
• Provide training on holding 'confident conversations' about difficult topics e.g. mental health, risk assessments, managing people with different needs, and providing more emotional support

Train managers in available information such as the NHS’s: Making health and wellbeing vital in conversations guidance and wellbeing coaching questions - for managers. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) offers: How to help your team thrive at work

During COVID-19 many training facilities that equip staff with specialist skills have been unable to work effectively so accreditation has not been possible. Furthermore, medical fitness for work certificates may have expired and not been renewed due to the pressures on the healthcare system. Across many sectors (e.g. emergency services, construction, healthcare), these effects could have consequences for the availability of staff who have the required skills/training and are permitted to work; a problem accentuated by the departure of skilled staff during the crisis. Consider:

• How your workforce's skills profile has changed as a result of the effects of COVID-19 e.g.:
  • training centres stopping training new recruits, meaning there is a lack of new staff in the recruitment pipeline
  • expiration of staff's specialist qualifications/registration, meaning they are not permitted/qualified to deliver usual activities
  • granting of medical eligibility to work during the crisis, and impacts on staff ability to work
  • staff being made unemployed or retiring during the crisis
  • staff who have contracted COVID-19 and who are unable to return to normal duties
• Putting temporary waivers in place to enable workers to continue despite their skills expiring
• How staff whose qualifications have expired during COVID-19 can be re-accredited
• How to ensure staff are medically fit to work
• How to address and overcome the immediate impacts of a shortage of accredited staff
• How to mitigate the multi-year impacts on your sector from COVID-19's disruption to skills, training and staff loss

Reference: Fire Department, Germany

Every organisation has been affected by COVID-19 which has had impacts on operations, staff, suppliers, customers or other parts of its activities. Some organisations have temporarily stopped delivering certain activities or have achieved them through other means. This has led organisations to consider the value-added of those activities and evaluate certain activities that may no longer be necessary. To identify activities that can be stopped, consider:

• What activities were changed in response to the effects of COVID-19
• What has been learned about the actual value those activities were delivering, compared to the expected value
• How to stop or replace activities that were not delivering the expected value

In addition, consider:

• How to identify other activities that were not stopped during COVID-19 but that are not delivering the expected value so could be stopped
• How to measure the saving from stopping the activity
• What to do with the saved resource from stopping the activity e.g. reduce capacity or redeploy that capacity
• How other aspects of the organisation should change to support the stopping of activities (e.g. changing physical spaces, policies, processes, priorities, roles)