Another potential COVID-19 casualty: workplace collaboration
The year 2020 has been a challenging one for our nation and the world. In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has faced heightened racial tensions and a deep political divide culminating in a contested presidential election. Emotions have been running high, and fear seems to rule the day. Through it all, our workplaces unfortunately haven’t been spared from the turmoil. Millions lost their jobs, and millions of others are working from home, often in physical isolation from their colleagues. If the health crisis doesn’t end soon so we can get back together, I worry about the unavoidable loss of collaboration and trust that helped many employers and employees to weather the first round of the outbreak.
How we got here
When the pandemic first hit, none of us knew what to expect. How could we? We hadn’t seen a global pandemic of this proportion in generations, and we were confident medical advances since the Spanish Flu of 1918 would help us to combat the coronavirus.
With limited information and understanding of the situation, we were called on to act. We had to decide how to respond to the virus for ourselves, our families, and our communities. Some of us also had responsibilities to our employees, customers, partners, and investors. The uncertainty of the situation, the significance of the human and economic consequences, and the speed at which we had to act created an incredibly intense atmosphere. In my 30-plus years in business, I had never experienced anything like it.
Sure, there have been parallels with 9/11: