Have you? I don't mean have you personally recovered from having Covid. I mean have you taken the time to think back over the last 32 months and reflect on, and recognise the need to recover from, the total impact of the pandemic on your life?
Reflect
I did an exercise this week with a Leadership Team I'm working with where we each shared our experience of the Pandemic and the impact it had on our lives.
The purpose was not to identify who had had the easiest time. It wasn't to compare our own experience with that of others. It was to think about and articulate and share what our lives have been like for the last 2 and a half years.
Some shared grief and loss; some shared family juggling struggles; some shared fears for the health of loved ones (and themselves); some described their own Long Covid symptoms; some shared things they'd actually enjoyed about the enforced staying at home - others shared how hard they had found this. Some shared fears about the health of colleagues and beneficiaries, wondering "what they were going to come back to work to?"
While the team acknowledged the exercise felt a little awkward for about the first 3 minutes, they also acknowledged how good it had been to share, and how good it had been to hear about others' experiences.
Recovery
Having shared, we then went on to talk about Recovery
What had we each done to acknowledge the additional challenge and stress and emotion that the pandemic inflicted on each of us, and what did we each need to aid the recovery process?
I'll share with you the things we came up with:
1) There are many things that can't be undone. But we do need to accept that much of this is part of a grief process and we need to allow ourselves the space to grieve.
2) Even those whose experiences were the same or similar, felt them very differently. We must not assume that others feel the same way we do, we need to give them the space to share too
3) There has been no let-up since the end of the main pandemic restrictions, we and our colleagues are working harder than ever
4) We need time individually and collectively to recover and regroup - we need this more than we need anything else. We NEED this to be able to have half a chance of achieving the things we've set out to achieve in the next 12 months
5) We all recognised the benefit we all felt just from having had that time and conversation between ourselves, and that we also needed to do the same with our own teams, and encourage them to do the same with theirs
6) We identified the next part of the process was to create and embed a People Recovery Plan
So, I'll ask you again,
Have you recovered from Covid?
If, as I suspect, the answer is "no" or "not fully", what do you need to do (or not do for a while) that will help you recover?
If you want help to create a similar People Recovery Plan for your organisation click here and we can have a chat