Why employers need to address ‘Covid fatigue’

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As workplaces manage the gradual return to physical working, employers need to be recognising, and supporting, ‘Covid fatigue’ that may have built up over the past year-and-a-half, both among employees and employers. Brett Hill outlines ways to minimise these pandemic-related feelings of exhaustion and exasperation. Fed up with restrictions, isolation, cancelled holidays, not being able to make plans, everyone has suffered through the pandemic, quite aside from those who have been hit by the virus itself. Add to this the particular challenges for employees and their employers, such as furlough ending, return to work, cancelled orders, and it is not surprising that companies and staff are suffering from ‘Covid fatigue’. Covid fatigue is a phrase we at Towergate Health and Protection have coined to explain the way many of us are currently feeling. It covers the feeling of exhaustion and exasperation from constantly having to keep up with changing regulations and demands brought about by the pandemic. Both employers and employees are likely to currently be suffering the effects of Covid fatigue but this manifests itself in different ways.

Employees suffering from Covid fatigue

There are many ways in which employees may be suffering from Covid fatigue. It could be in their home life, with unwell friends and family, self-isolation, cancelled plans, social remoteness. Or it could be in their working life, from working from home, furlough and the anxiety of returning to the office.

Employers suffering from Covid fatigue

Employers too, face all the same difficulties in their home lives as their employees, but they are also shouldering a great deal of responsibility, from having to provide moral support to struggling staff through to dealing with the business and economic fall-out of the pandemic. It should not be forgotten that employers, too, may find working from home a strain and may also have apprehension over the return