I perused an Inc.com article covering top concerns CEOs have for a Post-COVID world and cannot help but feel they completely missed the mark. I understand CEOs need to focus on business, but the article falls well short in expressing the human toll of COVID on a company’s most important aspect…the employees.
The article cites lack of autonomy? Stifled innovation? These “concerns” strike me as feigned empathy.
COVID hit me for two weeks. Week one served as the preamble to a second week that delivered a hospital stay, insomnia, fevers and shortness of breath with the smallest amount of exertion…and I had it easy. While in the hospital, I heard of month’s long patient stints, last-resort plasma donations and countless alarms calling staff to a patient’s bedside. So, yeah, I had it easy.
I made it a point to chat with the nurses whenever they had time. You see, the COVID isolation floor was full. The smaller hospital I was in had a capacity of around 50 beds…which translates to 50 people who need constant vigilance. I went into the hospital the week after the election. An election that saw people swarming the streets in reaction. People in the streets not social distancing and not necessarily upholding mask regulations. All of this taking place on the TV in my hospital room. I could not help but ask the nursing staff how that felt. One nurse delivered the reality as she and her colleagues see it, “when I see all those people together, I know how it will end. Even if a small amount end up in the hospital, that will bring the system to its knees and, for me, I know I am already at a breaking point.” All I could do was thank her.
She is an example of the real issue that will plague us in a post-COVID world (whatever that becomes). The mental toll is immeasurable. Those with COVID isolate from friends and family. Patients are alone in the hospital without even a glimmer of hope for a visitor less they chance spreading COVID. What of people who live alone? Those who just moved to a new location after losing a job? Think of those people and tell me that lack of innovation is a concern!
COVID is ravaging this country. I fear for what happens when we finally all poke our heads out of the quarantine we are in, adapt to a new reality and then return to work as usual. What will companies do for the employees who had COVID? Had a loved one with COVID? Lost someone to COVID? Or is a person simply terrified to physically go back to work after someone gives the all clear?
There are countless articles bemoaning with the mental fallout from COVID (Time, Johns Hopkins University Hub, The Lancet). I lived it and I had it easy. COVID takes a mental toll that is not covered in television news bites. Watching the COVID totals rise on TV tends to desensitize. The impact is on people, not on statistics. We hear of loss of taste and smell which but the endless nights alone when you cannot even ponder watching more TV or listen to more music or read another book are the real struggle. Facetime and texting allow for an escape until a fever spikes to 105 at 2 a.m. and the six pack of Gatorade is empty and the climb up the stairs to the refrigerator seems like an insurmountable hurdle. Compound all of this with ER visits and hospital stays where patients are alone and just want to get better…but need to remain cognizant of what is going on, what meds they are getting or who to call if they cannot respond…while alone and struggling along with staff that are over-worked and exhausted.
Each person who falls to COVID has issues to get past. Returning to work is not an indicator that they are recovered and have hit the finish line ready to attack the work week. It is an indicator that they feel better, physically, but the mental toll will continue and I am not sure corporate America is prepared for what happens.
