HR Industry Brief

According to a new study, healthcare workers are significantly more likely to have antibodies to the coronavirus (whether or not they had been diagnosed with COVID-19) if they are African American or Latinx. Among other findings:

• Not all workers with antibodies reported having symptoms. However, among those who did, the most common was loss of smell.
• People with hypertension or high blood pressure were more likely to have higher degrees of antibody response.
• Asthma patients has lower antibody levels.
• People more frequently contracted the virus in their private lives, instead of on the job.

• ¬ Separation from family members.
• ¬ Managing the personal needs and demands of family.
• ¬ Experiencing financial hardship.

Toxic managers often attempt to hide their hostility and negativity with sarcasm and passive-aggressive language. Here are the kinds of comments that suggest a toxic, dysfunctional environment:

• “Did you think this was well done?” Such rhetorical questions do nothing but hurt morale, performance, and engagement.
• “I should have expected this from you.” If you were really expected to fail at a task, why did your boss give it to you? Instead, it should have been assigned to someone else, or your manager should have coached you so that you could succeed.
• “Let’s schedule our one-on-one for 6 pm.” A good manager realizes and respects that people have responsibilities and interests outside of work and that work-life balance is essential. A comment like this is less of a request and more of a power-play.
• “Being on time for a meeting is being late.” No, being on time for a meeting is being on time. If it essential for you to be early to a meeting … [Read more...] about (2/25) 9 Toxic Things Your Boss Should Never Say

The COVID pandemic has brought tremendous attention to the workforce challenges in post-acute and long-term care. A new report suggests some important changes that need to be made to ensure consistent, capable staffing and safe, successful communities moving forward:

• A federal minimum wage for nursing home workers. In at least one study, increased wages among nursing assistants resulted in 21% lower turnover.
• Federal minimum staffing levels. A congressional report found that incremental increases in staff resulted in improved quality of patient care. Another study found that staffing levels have a “large and significant” impact on care quality.
• End the federally mandated lock-out period. In 2017 alone, these prevented nearly 2,900 individuals from starting CNA training programs.

  Constant bombardment with opinions, rumors, theories, news, personal stories, angry rants, and more via social media can alter your brain and body, according to researchers. Here’s how:

• Social media can desensitize us to tragedies. Too much information, misinformation, and disinformation all contribute to people feeling less shocked and more detached from disasters and tragedies.
• Constant ‘doomscrolling’ can rewire the nervous system and release stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. It also can lead to mood swings, appetite loss, and even cardiovascular issues.

• Monitor and limit online time and set boundaries as to when and how you access news.
• Scroll for good news.
• Seek healthier ways to fill up idle time and cope with negative thoughts and feelings. Engage in self-care such as exercise.
• Ignore/resist feelings that you’re missing out on … [Read more...] about (2/23) Social Media Is Traumatizing Us More Than We Realize

The stories about frontline worker struggling during the pandemic – sleeping in their cars, hitchhiking to work, going without food—have been all too common in the past several months. To improve economic security for direct care workers, PHI suggests the following:

• Pay direct care workers a living wage.
• Improve access to full-time schedules for direct car workers.
• Strengthen the social safety net and improve access to workplace benefits for direct care workers.
• Evaluate the unintended impact of wage increase measures on direct care workers, their employers, and consumers.

The hard truth is that there will always be another crisis coming now the pike. The good news is that you can learn from the recent past and be better prepared when the next crisis comes. Here’s how:

• Reflect and optimize. Take time to analyze and assess your organization’s performance soon after a crisis when everything is fresh in everyone’s minds.
• Create or enhance your plan. Conduct a scenario analysis, a stakeholder analysis, and a standing meeting agenda.
• Practice responding to a crisis. Conduct drills involving a variety of scenarios.
• Take risk management and monitoring seriously. A check-the-box approach to risk management won’t work. Build information and intelligence monitoring capabilities to collect and analyze the various kinds of data you are receiving. Use this to determine what’s working and where change is needed.

Understanding how a new employee might act or function in various situations is important to having teams that work well together – especially during a crisis. Behavioral interviewing is a strategic way to get a sense of how a job candidate’s past performance might support your organization’s needs. A few questions can help you identify a great candidate:

• Tell me about a time where you felt defeated. How did you respond?
• Describe a time when you were asked to perform a task or spearhead an initiative went against your values. What did you do? What was the outcome?
• Think about the most exciting and energizing aspect of your current or most recent position. What did you specifically enjoy about it? Why?
• Think back to one of the most energy-depleting periods in your current or most recent most recent position. What was going on? How did you respond to it? What was the outcome?

It’s a perfect storm. Employees are stressed out and exhausted, but they’re not pursuing preventive care. According to a new study, workers are putting off key preventive interventions:

• Colonoscopies are down 88%
• Mammograms are down 76%
• Pap Smears are down 77%

Great teamwork has been key to many organizations surviving the pandemic. Moving forward, teams are likely to look and function in different ways, so it will be essential to ensure that meetings are efficient, productive, and engaging. Three new habits will make this easier:

1. Define the meeting culture. What is expected of a meeting? Will be there a strict agenda? Will it start and end precisely at specific times? The leader needs to set the tone and model meeting behavior and structure.
2. Clarify who and how people should be involved. Meeting overload is a symptom of poor planning and contributes to morale problems. Only involve those individuals who absolutely need to be at meetings and be respectful of their time and contributions.
3. Teach/empower team members to define their desired outcomes. Encourage people to go into meetings with specific objectives and goals and a plan to achieve these.

In 2020, 10 global research teams examined evidence behind promising approaches for preventing anxiety and depression in the workplace. Among the findings:

• Flexible work can reduce work-life conflict, a major source of stress, depression, and anxiety. To be successful, this needs to have the support of managers throughout the organization.
• Breaking up sitting for long periods of time with some activity can help reduce depression symptoms by 10% and anxiety by 15%.
• More autonomy is associated with lower rates of anxiety and depression.