6 Ways to Support Your Employees in Difficult Times

“It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home, for this is where our love for each other must start” (St. Teresa of Calcutta).

There are a surprising number of verses in Scripture that business leaders can use as a guide for how to treat their employees. (Upon reflection, maybe it’s not a surprise; after all, as Pope Francis writes in “Laudato Si,” “We were created with a vocation to work.”)

From the Catechism, we know that as business leaders, it is our responsibility to care for the people entrusted to us as employees (2432). Doing so requires a just wage (2434) — but what happens when we fall on hard times? What if we can’t give our employees a just wage, because our businesses are suffering? What if we can give them a just wage, but a wage is not enough to help them meet their physical, emotional, or spiritual needs?

In short, what if we are leading a business or a team during a pandemic?

If you are a leader — of a company, a department, a team, of a family, of yourself — here are six ways you can support the people who support you:

1. Help Them Learn Stress Management Skills

We are living in stressful times. In fact, a recent Washington Post article reported on a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation in which 45% of adults said the coronavirus pandemic has affected their mental health (the number was even higher among women).

Unfortunately, many of us do not know how to manage stress well. In a 2018 survey by Everyday Wellness, almost half of respondents said “their response to stress is to take it out on themselves.” Workplace and health-related stress were two of the most common sources of stress before COVID-19, so imagine how employees are feeling now.

One way you can support your team members is by teaching them stress management strategies. It can be as simple as starting virtual meetings with a quick breathing exercise or as elaborate as hiring a stress management instructor to give a virtual workshop. You might consider paying for a subscription to a meditation app (Hallow, for example, uses Catholic prayer) for your employees or doing a team read of a book on stress management or a related topic (some of my favorites are Brené Brown’s books).

Ale Richardson, a Catholic Women in Business community member and a senior medical writer at Vaniam Group, says Vaniam (a network of health care and scientific communications agencies) has started offering Zoom workouts and meditation sessions. Some of her co-workers are also providing a storytelling session every week for families with small children. “My company was already 100% virtual ... but they’re really trying to take care of everyone mentally and emotionally,” she adds.

2. Be Flexible

Your employees are dealing with a lot right now. If they’re single, they’re trying to cope with isolation; if they’re married, they’re figuring out how to work from home with spouses and maybe children. They are stressed and worried and trying to find a balance, so be as flexible as you can. Ellen French writes in an article for Career Contessa, “Of course, calls and meetings have to be scheduled, but trust your employees to organize their schedules in the way that works best for them.”

Quantity and quality of work matters more than when it happens. Honor your team members’ personal commitments. Encourage your working parents to spend time with their children (this can be a wonderful opportunity for them, with your support!). Ask your team members who are caring for ill or elderly family members if they need to make any adjustments in their work hours.

Maybe we’ll come out of this pandemic with a renewed appreciation of the humanness of our employees and an understanding that they can be successful without a strict 8-5 schedule.

3. Show Them You Care

Catholic woman-owned Just Love Prints recently launched a “30 Days of Happy Mail Challenge” on Instagram. Each day has a suggestion of someone who could probably use a happy message in the mail right now. Use this challenge as inspiration, and send a card to one of your team members, suppliers, or customers who has been struggling lately or who has been extra supportive of you and your struggles.

If you don’t want to go to a store and thumb through greeting cards, make your own, or use plain stationery. As part of the 30 Days of Happy Mail Challenge, Just Love Prints is offering free printable stationery, and Hallmark is also giving away three free cards to anyone who fills out this form. The vehicle you use matters much less than the message inside it.

As Just Love Prints’ owner Lindsay Trezza said, “God created you to be alive at this time in history for a reason, and the people in your life are in need of a light that only you can bring … Let’s be Christ’s hands and feed … through happy mail! It’s time to shine, girl!”

4. Over-communicate (but Be Mindful of How)

So much communication in the workplace happens in casual chats at the coffee station or quick “Hey, do you have a minute?” desk drop-bys. During a time when things are constantly changing and stress is high, communication is more important than ever — and you’ve lost those impromptu face-to-face conversation opportunities.

That’s why it’s critical to communicate more than usual. Keep your employees in the loop about the business’ plans moving forward. Realign the team on goals and strategy. Hold virtual office hours, where employees can “drop in” to ask questions or express concerns. Celebrate team and individual wins. Consider sharing some of your own personal struggles, too; this vulnerability will help build trust and show your team members that they aren’t alone.

Finally, consider carefully how you’re communicating. Many people are suffering from “Zoom fatigue,” and it’s no wonder: In a recent BBC article, psychiatrist Gianpiero Petriglieri of INSEAD and psychologist Marissa Shuffler of Clemson share several reasons video calls are exhausting, including the difficulty processing nonverbal cues, the “performative” aspect, and the fact that our personal and professional contexts have now become blended. They recommend limiting video calls, allowing employees to keep their videos off when it’s not necessary to have them on, incorporating “transition time” between meetings, and taking time during video calls to check in with employees’ well-being “before diving into business.”

“Be conscious of how you show up and whether you are fueling or depleting your team through your interactions with them,” writes Nicole Bendaly, president of leadership development firm K&Co., in a Forbes article. “It is the seemingly little things that will impact the energy in your team right now.”

5. Organize a Group Volunteer Project

Many people and communities need help right now, and you and your employees don’t have to leave your homes to give back. Organizing a group virtual volunteer project will engage team members, create a sense of group cohesion, demonstrate that you and your business care about people as well as profits, and help others in need.

“Especially in a crisis, people need to find ways to contribute to the community and help their neighbors,” says Amber Smith, executive director of Activate Good. “Helping out can help employees feel a sense of meaning and control over a chaotic situation, and doing so as a company improves their sense of loyalty and feelings of being part of a team that does good. A great article in the New York Times called ‘The Science of Helping Out’ recently shared how helping can reduce feelings of anxieties in a time like the one we’re in now.”

If you don’t already have connections to community organizations, there are online resources that can help. “One way to find group remote volunteer opportunities is to team up with your local volunteer center,” says Smith. “A volunteer center is a nonprofit in your community that promotes volunteer needs from hundreds of organizations in one spot.” For example, in my hometown, Activate Good shares Raleigh, N.C.-area volunteer opportunities online and works with businesses to create service projects.

You can find the volunteer center closest to you here. At the national level, VolunteerMatch.org is another online resource for volunteer opportunities. Of course, the best way to make sure the volunteering project engages your employees is to ask them for suggestions. Do any of your team members already volunteer? Do any of them have organizations or causes about which they are particularly passionate?

6. Have an “Executive Meeting With God”

Of course, central to the Catholic woman’s life should be prayer. And whether you’re finding it harder to pray now because of everything that’s going on or whether you’re finding comfort in prayer (I’ve personally vacillated between both of these scenarios), it’s in times like these that we need to be in constant communication with the Lord. This article by our contributor Maggie Phillips shares some tips for incorporating prayer into your daily routine (and no matter how much your daily routine is no longer routine, you may still find them helpful).

Catholic Women in Business community member Diane White O’Connor says that she is thankful for her “daily executive meetings with Jesus.” As the owner of Dunn Brothers Coffee, which employs five full-time and 11 part-time employees, she has a lot of difficult decisions to make, and she takes them to prayer each day:

“Do we stay open? Do we modify services? Which employees are OK, and which are struggling? How do I encourage them? … How do I empower them to do good during this very stressful time? Do they feel safe interacting with people? (God bless my friend who made masks for all of them!) Help me keep my own stress in check. Which SBA program do I utilize? What people in the community need our outreach right now? Do I really have to watch yet another press conference to know what our governor is asking today? Jesus, I’m gonna need you to get some dairy products to our distributor; we can’t operate without it. Oh, and Jesus, please keep my husband, who is frontline EMS, safe and healthy.”

She says her prayers are an “all-day conversation right now. I just can’t do all of this without Him,” and without being able to start the day with daily (live) Mass, prayer is more important than ever.

I’ve personally found guidance recently from the saints and the Psalms. I just finished Susan Muto’s book “Twelve Little Ways to Transform Your Heart: Lessons in Holiness and Evangelization from St. Thérèse of Lisieux,” and it renewed my respect for and relationship with my Confirmation saint. Her teaching on suffering is inspiring, and following her Little Way can be useful for those of us who are “sheltering in place” with loved ones or finding our tempers short due to our raised stress levels.

I’ve never found the Psalms especially meaningful but discovered recently that they have been the most relevant and inspiring parts of the daily readings. That combination of lament and praise is really speaking to me right now, and it’s comforting to remember that God can take it when we are frustrated, afraid, or angry and to keep in mind that He is, ultimately, in charge.

On a recent Instagram Live conversation, Catholic Women in Business co-founder Elise Crawford Gallagher and I talked about a line from Psalm 118: “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad” (24). Yes, the Lord made even these days — and yes, we can still find ways to rejoice and be glad in them.

We are living in difficult times, but there will always be difficult times. There will always be employees with disabilities, with ill family members, with children, with stress or anxiety or depression. Fortunately, we will always have our executive meetings with God to help us lead them with love.

Taryn Oesch is the managing editor of Catholic Women in Business, a contributing writer and assistant editor at FemCatholic.com, and a fertility educator in training. An active volunteer, Taryn is the board secretary and communications chair at The Power of the Dream, a head coach at Miracle League of the Triangle, and a volunteer at Birthchoice of Wake County. You can follow Taryn on Twitter; on Instagram; on Facebook; and on her blog, Everyday Roses.