2020. A year like no other…

Yes, it has truly been a year like no other. I’m certainly very glad that I didn’t make any predictions for the year ahead back in January 2020… by mid-March all bets were off!

Of course, knowing what we know now it’s almost impossible to write a review of the year that doesn’t major on the impact of the pandemic, however much I wish that was not the case. The effects of Covid-19 on working life have been profound and various. From the very personal to the organisational to the economic and social.

Like most people I could make my own observations, but at Robertson Cooper we’re lucky enough to have access to data that tells the story better than I ever could anecdotally. As well as the health and wellbeing data we routinely collect as part of our own client and R&D work, this year we’ve partnered with Aviva on their ground-breaking Age of Ambiguity research programme.

What’s changed? 

Together we explored the impact that ambiguity is having on key aspects of working life, from wellbeing and work-life balance to employee-employer relationships. Uniquely, we took a snapshot of working life in February 2020 and then again in August to examine the impact of Covid-19 on work and society more broadly. We found that working life had changed markedly.

Perhaps most notably the number of employees who were ‘completely happy’ halved between February and August. Equally, around half of the 2000 employees we surveyed in August reported they never switch off from work and more than a quarter neglected their physical and mental health due to busyness at work. Robertson Cooper’s own client data backs this up – showing a 13% drop in psychological health scores post-Covid.

So although perhaps unsurprising, this is pretty definitive evidence of the impact of Covid-19 on employee health and wellbeing. I’m sure we can all identify with the strain of living and working through the pandemic – and all that that has entailed so far. We’ve all had different experiences though, so it’s when we drill down below this high level ‘outcome level’ that some of the more interesting insights become apparent.

For example, in the study we worked on with Aviva more than half (52%) of UK employees agree that the boundaries between their work and home life have become increasingly blurred, up from 40% in February before the pandemic. And overall, that piece of research – and others – showed a general disengagement or ‘drift’ on the part of employees since the initial lockdown in March. A sense that we are now defining ourselves much less by our work, whilst at the same time displaying a greater sense of self-reliance – a kind of everyone-for-themselves ‘survival’ mentality.

Remote working has, of course, become the norm for office workers and contributed to this blurring effect. This has undoubtedly created challenges for both employees and employers in terms of staying connected and engaged, creating a sense purpose day-to-day and maintaining energy and motivation.

However, it’s important for those of us who work in offices not to succumb to myopia here – because those who don’t work in offices – construction, transport, retail, emergency services and the rest – have had quite different experiences. The data we collected with Aviva tells us that office workers were struggling with work and life blurring like never before, but at the same time appreciated their employers’ efforts to support them; meanwhile though, manual workers hardly saw work and life blur at all and were much less positive about employer support. There are important lessons for employers here about the risks of adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to employee experience and wellbeing in the months and years ahead.

Another area for concern in these uncertain times is presenteeism. Shockingly, our own parallel data collection effort during September and October 2020 showed that 84% of around 1600 respondents said they ‘would carry on working whilst ill’. In support of that trend, the Aviva research showed that the number of people who have taken no sick days has risen by 17 percentage-points during this year.

This is against a backdrop of uncertainty and insecurity – as reflected by a 16% drop in ratings of job security in our own client data from pre- to post-Covid. Clearly, economic uncertainty, lack of job security and perhaps the blurred lines between home and work (think e-presenteeism!) are all playing a defining role here – and employers cannot afford to ignore what their employees are telling them.

So there can be little doubt that many important questions have been raised for employers during the last 9 months. One of the biggest concerns I’ve been hearing from clients is how to re-define ‘duty of care’ in a world where many employees have drifted away and disengaged in response to the changes Covid-19 has wrought. Invariably, all of the good stuff that employers already had in place to support employees has been seen positively, but if you look at the health, wellbeing and happiness outcomes I mentioned above, plus others like job satisfaction, they are all down. So something about what employers have been offering isn’t cutting through in a post-Covid context. In my mind, the research findings here represent a real call to action for employers to consider what else is needed in a (much) more fluid and ambiguous working environment where almost every employee faces different challenges. If the idea of personalising approaches to wellbeing was on the rise in 2019, it’s certainly here to stay after 2020!

Stepping back, as a firm of business psychologists and wellbeing specialists that operates nationally and internationally, we’ve started to see some real shifts in the health and wellbeing marketplace as employers seek to rise to these challenges and put more sustainable support in place for their employees.

Perhaps most significantly, employee health and wellbeing finally seems to have become a genuine Board-level issue. There’s been an acceptance that strategic approaches are required to stay in control of a very fluid situation and a fast-evolving psychological contract with employees. In many cases this has involved moving away from piecemeal ‘initiative-led’ approaches in favour of much more joined-up thinking. It’s perhaps regrettable that it took a global pandemic to get it there, but it is to be hoped that this will be one of more positive aspects of Covid-19’s legacy.

Likewise, high quality health and wellbeing measurement seems to be on the rise as employers seek to get a grip of their duty of care and track the effectiveness of the support they offer employees in the ‘new normal’. This is about giving employees a real and consistent voice when it comes to all things health and wellbeing. It’s about making it ok to have the wellbeing conversation and moving away from tick-box engagement survey approaches that nod to wellbeing, but don’t truly embed or support it.

And finally, our clients have embraced virtual training – they had to, we had to! The pandemic has forced firms like Robertson Cooper to increase the quality and sustainability of the remote training offering. We’ve enjoyed doing it and our clients have appreciated the shift we’ve been able to make. It’s also brought unanticipated benefits of reducing travel time and costs for our clients and team alike – this is good for the environment and everyone involved in training, particularly in an international training context. In the long-term, this will be a positive change to the way work is done and experienced.

Let’s start with some optimism! There’s little doubt that the prospect of a vaccine offers some much needed certainty to both employers and employees across the world. Even though we don’t know how and when this will be felt, we can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In this context I think it will be very interesting, and instructive, to see which changes to working life will be temporary and which will be permanent as things return to ‘normal’. Will home-working-as-standard stick? If it does will this be driven by employers or employees? Or both? Will the work-life-balance positives associated with spending more time at home be retained or is there a risk of a kind of ‘snap-back’ into the old ways as we start to realise that the crisis is abating?

And perhaps most pertinent from my perspective, will the huge upsurge in interest in health and wellbeing (and the bar was already pretty high!) be maintained as employers realise we’re not on an emergency measures footing anymore?

Of course, with the fall-out from Covid still in the air and Brexit just around the corner there is still plenty of uncertainty ahead. Seldom has there been a time where work seems less ‘in-control’. But overwhelmingly I think now is a time to be positive, to celebrate the resilience our people and organisations have shown during this most unpredictable and testing of years – and to look the future.

So from myself, Cary, Ivan and the whole team at Robertson Cooper I’ll sign off by wishing you all a very happy and safe Christmas – and, most importantly, a very different New Year!

Want to learn more about the ‘Age of Ambiguity’ report findings? Watch a video exploring key questions raised by the report with Professor Sir Cary Cooper and Dr Subashini M, Associate Medical Director, Aviva UK Health & Protection.