Are we okay?
COVID-19’s Toll on Mental Health
By: Lisa Carrel, Co-Founder & CEO
“We’re all doing well. Healthy, getting along and staying busy with work.” Thats what I say and hear regularly from friends and colleagues. But how are we really?
While it’s difficult to quantify, what is the cost of our physical separation from one another? If we could directly apply a dollar value to the cost this pandemic has had on our emotional well being my bet is that it would fall in the trillions, if not more.
Online tools, virtual platforms and zoom meetings and organized friends nights in have helped tremendously. My family just discovered “Poker Now” and it’s been a blast. But even with all of the technology available at our fingertips there is undoubtedly a void.
Like many others, I wonder, will we ever get back to the way things were? Crowded trains, packed meetings, lunches side by side. All once seemingly mundane, regular events have, in just under 10 months, turned foreign and scary. Is our world forever changed or will our short term memory prevail? How will we look back on this time - when we were mentally, kind of, losing it?
I believe that we are forever changed, for the better. The entire world has lived through an experience that we never thought we would. We are united in the experience we all went though, together - while separate.
As we continue to develop better techniques for making in-person interaction safe (contact tracing, risk management software, vaccines, masks, etc.) business leaders have a chance to capitalize on two major opportunities:
A “water cooler moment”: The energy, idea flow, innovation and productivity that will come when we begin to interact and celebrate what we once took for granted.
Diverse acceptance and inclusion: We’ve all been through a life altering, shared experience. As employees come back to the office and gather for in-person meetings the magnetic force of needing to be with one another will empower us to look beyond superficial differences. Our shared experience and raw need for connection will unlock genuine understanding and team building.
While it will take steps and require new business thinking and risk management planning, businesses that embrace and empower employees to come back to one another, in-person will win over those that endlessly keep people remote. While what we have been through continues to be a challenge, I am comforted in recognizing that this is a shared weight and I am motivated to use our recovery to unlock new understanding, tolerance and appreciation for one another.