Isolated, Bored Employees Could Use a Little TLC These Days
There are things bosses can do to make workers feel valued and connected.
When people say they’ve hit a “pandemic wall,” they’re sometimes talking about all the dishes they’re doing, the “hard pants” they haven’t worn in months, and the same, stupid walk they take every day. But the conversation is mostly about work.
It’s critical that companies help meet employees’ baseline psychological needs. Our stability, experts say, depends on having control over our days, as well as a sense of belonging, purpose, and growth. In normal times we meet those needs through interactions with co-workers, neighbors, romantic partners, family members, friends, and exercise buddies. Our current dependency on roommates and Zoommates means our minds, which are constantly monitoring for these external inputs, can feel starved, says organizational psychologist Lydia Woodyatt, an associate professor at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who runs a popular corporate workshop on psychological needs and the workplace.