When the Going Gets Tough
Sometimes, a simple ‘thank you' can be a driver for resilience in these anxiety ridden times. Bea Buckley looks at the measures various companies are implementing to get employees through the worst of it.
If you look up the meaning of personal resilience you’ll find definitions such as ‘the ability to cope under pressure’ and ‘the ability to withstand, adapt to and recover from stress and adversity.’ This language and subject has become linked to the Covid-19 pandemic over the last two years, but the issue of personal resilience in the workplace has been growing for more than a decade.
Let’s go back to 2008 and the day Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opened for business. The build-up was immense; talked up as a major transport event by the government, the airport and media alike, the new terminal was billed as a major boost to the UK economy.
Andy Garner, now a director of the FourSails Partnership, was Head of Operational Readiness for British Airways, for which Terminal 5 was to become its flagship. Garner’s track record of getting operations prepped and primed for days saw him placed in the role four months before opening day to ensure a smooth start in the face of some emerging issues. For those who don’t remember what happened next, the baggage system failed disrupting travel plans for thousands. The day was branded a disaster, total chaos, a national embarrassment.
I got home from work at 11pm that night and was back at 3.30 the next morning. My wife, Alison, told me I looked grey.
Garner had handed over the reins to the operational team for opening day and had no role within the command and control structure. He felt helpless – and responsible.
Garner recalls: “I got home from work at 11pm that night and was back at 3.30 the next morning. My wife, Alison, told me I looked grey. It was all over the news and my daughter was in tears. My son said to me, ‘Dad, you’re a national embarrassment.’ It wasn’t said in complete seriousness, but I couldn’t take it.”
Lessons were learned – by the Terminal 5 team and Garner, who says coaching has helped him to live in the moment instead of dwelling on past mistakes or what might come in future, boosting his own personal resilience. Seeking help is an important part of improving personal resilience. But how could communications have helped Garner and those around him?
Garner went on to prepare Heathrow to welcome the world for the London 2012 Olympics, and says that communications played a key part in helping their team prepare for the busy period that was to come. Communications helped them to achieve transparency, with everything said internally and externally matching. Preparing people in the right way was key to achieving the personal resilience required to make the event a success. He continues: “Communications is everything and that’s something I learned during 2012. Everything you say to the media is also being said to your team. We sat down with our people to work out what we wanted the Daily Mail to say about us in the coming weeks. It was great for setting expectations and preparing everyone for the weight of expectation that was to come. We achieved our ideal headline, too!”
Back to present day and to the NHS. Again no stranger to pressure, though the pandemic has brought a new and acutely challenging environment the frontline. Kate Jarman, Director of Corporate Affairs at Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, publicly campaigns for work/life balance, women’s safety and equality on her own social media. She explains why Covid-19 has been so tough: “It’s been different at each stage of the pandemic. At the start the hospital was full of very sick people, there were young people dying. People were getting used to wearing new PPE and following new rules. At times, a colleague would be the last person a dying patient saw. And at the end of the day, colleagues weren’t going home to their normal lives because we were in lockdown.”
We used platforms like Teams to run weekly Q&As with the leadership team, where colleagues could ask anonymous questions. That really helped to start conversations. We also ran bespoke sessions on things like how people were coping with sleep and anxiety.
Immense pressure. So how did Jarman’s team help? Technology came into its own but face-to-face communications was also an important part of helping colleagues to cope. Jarman says: “We used platforms like Teams to run weekly Q&As with the leadership team, where colleagues could ask anonymous questions. That really helped to start conversations. We also ran bespoke sessions on things like how people were coping with sleep and anxiety.”
Jarman’s team have done lots of broadcast media work during the pandemic. They have often consulted colleagues before doing this and she says, similarly to Terminal 5, people have welcomed the transparency this brings.
Something as simple as saying ‘thank you’ is of utmost importance while the Milton Keynes team have also organised the delivery of wellbeing hampers to colleagues by way of recognition. Counselling is offered to colleagues to help them deal with trauma. Jarman continues: “We run Schwartz Rounds, a session where a member of staff speaks about a specific experience in front of a panel. This happens in person, and is a way for people to process some of the harrowing things they’ve seen.”
The sandwich chain Pret a Manger has also been under pressure during the pandemic and the business has been busy finding new ways to serve customers. New initiatives such as their coffee subscription have been launched, whereby £20 a month will buy you five barista-made drinks a day. There are new supermarket ranges (frozen croissants and vegan granolas), click and collect or delivery options and Pret’s ground coffee being sold on Amazon. Not only have customers experienced a digital transformation but colleagues too. Change on this scale has posed a challenge to Pret colleagues’ personal resilience.
Global Communications Manager Stephen Dauncey, who is responsible for internal communications across all Pret’s markets, says: “The business has undergone more change over the last two years than in the rest of its history. We’ve introduced new ways of working and the coffee subscription has been so successful that it’s now a key part of our strategy going forward.”
Pret has also run a mixture of virtual and face-to-face communications activities to help colleagues through this period. Online forums with opportunities to ask leadership questions have proved popular, and there is a link on the payroll system giving colleagues the option of submitting questions anonymously. There are also coffee mornings with line managers, and Stephen believes offering a range of events has enabled colleagues to offer honest and candid feedback.
Wellbeing is a regular theme through internal communications at Pret, and there are regular sessions with leaders that focus on this subject. Through the pandemic, learning and development opportunities have been offered to colleagues who have suddenly found themselves working from home rather than in coffee shops. This is done through LinkedIn Learning, so that everyone can tailor their training to their own personal needs.
We talk about being ‘kind, honest and generous’, and ‘joy’ is really encouraged.
There is a deep-rooted service culture at Pret and Stephen believes it contributes towards colleagues feeling happy at work. He says: “We talk about being ‘kind, honest and generous’, and ‘joy’ is really encouraged. Our managers have complete autonomy and freedom to bring joy to their teams in whatever way they see fit.”
What tips are offered to fellow communicators? Jarman says: “It’s the job of internal communications to really listen and understand how people are feeling. I’d encourage colleagues to build great relationships internally so that they know who to go and chat to in every circumstance.”
Dauncey agrees with this, and adds: “As an internal communicator you have to be really proactive, so that the communications to colleagues is considered right at the beginning of an initiative.”
Finally, Jarman stresses the key to this lies in understanding that none of this can solve everything. She says: “The thing about personal resilience is that you don’t have to be resilient all of the time. It’s ok to struggle at times, you’re not expected to be robotic. This shouldn’t be seen as a failure.”