Strengthening and motivating employees during this covid crisis.

Just like employers feel jittery and insecure during crisis time, it is only natural that employees too feel anxious and apprehensive.

Communication is the act of conveying meanings from one entity or group to another through a media and the use of mutually understood signs, symbols, and semiotic rules.

The main steps in communication are as given below

• Motivation
• Message composition
• Message encoding
• Transmission
• Noise intrusion
  
• Reception
• Decoding and
• Interpretation    (wikipedia.org)
  

How well do we communicate with our peers, juniors, superiors etc is very vital for a successful career and life. It is more important and critial during this global; health crisis time.

While trying to understand what is passing through my colleague's and friends minds during this time by communicating and interacting with them over whatsapp, email and telephone has helped me to realise that during such crisis time, we need to communicate more frequently.

The communication should be in common commuunication channels and securely. One of the most secure communication channels these days people use is Whatsapp. Security of communication is vital as it can help sustain relationships and ensue nobody overhears whats being communicated.

The third most important constituent of effective communication between stakeholders is a safe and comfortable Work From Home (WFH) policy to ensure that the employees have all the hardware and items at home to help them communicated, or example, good laptops and high bandwidth Internet connections, safe, well lit and quiet place at home to work.

Very frequently we find even after providing all of the above facilities and conditions, employees still feel insecure. During this Covid crisis, employees are being fed news items daily on the accelerating nature of the spread of the virus. Employees are concerned about job security, whether after two months the company will be able to provide them with salary and whether they will be fired from their jobs. This is a very unsettling thought in the minds of all employees except maybe from the government sector in India and rest of the world where job security is guaranteed, come what may - rain or shine, virus or no virus.

As part of the communication strategy of the organisation and to reassure the employees of the true intent of the organisation, it needs to chalk out new development and growth plans for the future. This helps the existing employees to think of creative and positive ways in which it could contribute to the growth of the organisation in the future and to have the satisfaction of being able to contribute during dire times.

Very many organisations have been forced to close or wind up operations like in the service sector industries and people have lost their jobs in great numbers.

Organisations who are letting go of their employees need to ensure the employees are able to find alternative employment in as short time as possible and proactively help the employees regarding the same. This helps the employees to have a positive attitude towards the organisation and be ready to return to the parent organisation when the economic situation improves in the future. 

My thought process has been strengthened on the basis of the most recent research that has come out of Harvard Business School in this area from a 12 question survey handed out to 830 respondents in 10 for-profit, 10 not-for-profit and few governmental organisations in the US and published in HBR of July '20. Five tips for communicating with employees during a crisis.

Mutually motivating and friendly communications with good intent is the key during this Covid time to motivate and revitalise your employees to ensure they remain motivated, committed and useful to the organisation in the long run.

George..