Mental wellness top of mind

HR leaders are acutely aware of the potential impact of the national lockdown on mental wellness and come together to discuss their respective interventions during a CHRO Community Conversation.

With already-existing cases of employers facing severe financial constraints to the point of struggling to pay employees’ salaries, South Africa’s HR leaders are discussing wellness and mental health in the context of BY SUNGULA NKABINDE a working population that is understandably feeling a little overwhelmed by the current level of uncertainty.

Whether it is with regard to their health or job security, employees are anxious about the future. They are now also having to contend with working in this new working environment – their homes – which deliver a new variety of mental pressures and triggers.

Executives are doing a number of things to not only take care of themselves but to also put measures in place to ensure the mental well-being of employees.

Dimension Data’s chief HR executive Michaela Voller says they have indeed had concerns over how employees were coping emotionally due to the lockdown, “which drove us to start thinking about being more proactive about our approach to wellness, which is difficult to do because so much of the tools and systems that companies traditionally have in place are reactionary in nature.”

Engage, engage, engage

To boost employee engagement, Michaela says that, at Dimension Data, they have created a social networking app, which she describes as a corporate enterprise version of Facebook, through which employees can interact and participate in various wellness activities.

Vodacom CHRO Matimba Mbungela says they are running pulse surveys, which go out to all employees and can be completed in less than five minutes. “We ask three or four simple questions…‘How are you feeling about the lockdown? What kinds of challenges are you dealing with? How can we improve your work-from-home experience?’…that kind of thing,” says Matimba.

The pulse surveys have been a resounding success, achieving a 57 percent response rate the first time they were sent out to employees and 80 percent the second time. In fact, their success has led to Vodacom creating the ‘Take Your Chair Home’ campaign after a number of employees said the chairs they had at home were not comfortable to sit on for hours at a time. Vodacom employees are now able to fetch their chairs from the office and take them home.

Self-care

Another thing that executives are focusing on is exercise. EOH HR director Malisha Awunor says the company has started online group exercise sessions, which take place at 6am and are led by one of the group executive team members. Malisha says she has also enlisted the ‘services’ of her daughter, who is now her self-appointed personal trainer and

Tantaswa Fubu, Barloworld group human capital executive

ensures that Malisha is getting all the exercise she needs. “And she is very strict about time as well, so I’m definitely staying active.”

Most HR leaders agree that self-care is paramount because, “If you are not taking care of your own mental health, it becomes difficult to worry about others,” according to Altron HR director Dolores Mashishi.

“It’s also about giving yourself a break when work is not happening as efficiently as you would like. The fact is, people are unable to work right now and sometimes one has to be a bit more relaxed in their approach to matters of productivity. Take it easy on yourself and take it easy on others," she adds.

Workday business development director Kiveshen Moodley puts it best: “Self-care is very important. It’s like when you fly on an airplane, and the flight attendant instructs you to ‘put your oxygen mask on first’ before helping others... Because, if you run out of oxygen yourself, you can't help anyone else. Let’s all make sure we have our oxygen masks on first.”

“Empathy is also required when it comes to the manner in which we speak to and treat ourselves,” says Marshalls World of Sport strategy and transformation executive Sameera Ahmed, who has learnt to let go of the things she cannot control. Every day, she writes down the things that frustrate but are outside her locus of control.

“I write it down so that I can let it out. What that does for me psychologically is that it releases me from constantly pondering about it because I have made a concerted effort to remind myself that it is not in my control and that I need to let it go. This also enables me to be more empathetic when my team members face similar uncontrollable circumstances that prevent them from delivering what they were supposed to deliver.”

To maintain a positive outlook, Sameera also writes a list of three things she was able to accomplish at the end of every day. These are three things that she was most proud to be able to execute on that day. She thereafter writes three more things that would elicit the same feeling if completed the following day.

Offering support

HR leaders are doing everything they can to ensure employees have the support they need, with com

Michaela Voller, Dimension Data chief HR executive

panies offering access to a comprehensive range of preventative care and counselling services through ICAS. At Altron, they are also offering access to more coaching sessions for executives and employees than they ordinarily do.

At Barloworld, mental health has been an area of focus for a year now and, in addition to the ICAS services available to employees, they have psychologists on the premises to assist employees in dealing with whatever mental challenges they may be facing.

“Tomorrow, I am meeting with my wellness team to try to be more proactive about what we can do to ensure our people are taken care of as they return to work next week,” says Barloworld group human capital executive Tantaswa Fubu.

Sameera says the coronavirus lockdown has called for leadership with heart and empathy, saying that the importance of emotional intelligence has never been more pronounced than it is now.

That is why, whenever she has her check-in meeting with her team every morning, the first thing they discuss is how everybody is feeling, how each member is coping emotionally and generally reflecting on “where we all are as human beings before we even start to discuss work.”

Sameera says that alone is something that has not only brought her closer to her team members but has also allowed them to feel more vulnerable and safe to discuss whatever challenges they may be facing.

“We have to understand that it’s not just business as usual and that there is no longer such a thing as office hours so you can't expect responses as quickly as you would if everyone was in the office. You have to understand that some people work better in the early mornings or in the evenings when their children are asleep,” says Sameera, adding that leaders have to take all this into consideration when setting deliverables and timelines for executing them.

“It's important for employees to feel that they have a safe space in which they can raise issues about the challenges they're facing and whatever else may be hindering them from executing the tasks they've been given. So there is a huge need for flexibility and agility in terms of the structure and the process for delivering the work that is required," she says.

Diary management

Lastly, diary management has been the key to managing one’s own wellness. With everyone working from home, it can be easy to forget to take a break and not feel guilty about stepping away from the laptop, but Stanlib HR executive Nuncy Green says it is important to set time in her diary to remind herself to take a break and allow her mind to recharge.

“Sometimes you can have back-to-back meetings and, because you also want to get some work done, you end up not taking any breaks in between, which can be extremely draining, especially when you still have to be with your children when you step away from that machine,” says Nuncy, who is so specific when scheduling her downtime that she writes down the activities she plans on doing with the kids and exactly how she plans to rest and relax.

Lori Milner, the founder of Beyond the Dress, says the key to successful diary management is setting boundaries. This means setting a starting time and a quitting time and making a commitment to switch off whether the work is done or not – because the work is never really done. “If you don’t set that boundary you will start experiencing burnout,” she says.

Matimba Mbungela, Vodacom CHRO

When it comes to tasks, Lori says to focus specifically on finishing one or two things that you thought about either a day or a week prior, “because when you write a to-do list, the things that are at the top are often not the most important but rather just the tasks that first came to mind”.

Once a key task has been identified, Lori says to beware of distractions because they often derail people from the tasks they prioritised because the first thing they do in the morning is open their email inbox, which immediately takes them away from what they had initially planned to do.

She says emails are urgent for other people but often not very urgent for you, so be sure to do the things that give you peace of mind and relief, sooner.

“Be careful of self-interrupting. Every time your phone rings with someone sending you a meme or a funny joke, that is time away from your schedule.” She also says to design your work environment as conducive to being as productive as possible – even if it means having a snack and water in the room you work in so that you don’t have to leave to get a quick bite or drink. 