4 Valuable Lessons About Work and Life in a Year Like No Other

Fourteen months… and counting. Surreal living has taken a toll. So has working from makeshift home offices for those lucky enough not to be laid off, furloughed or tethered to a workplace where they had to mask up six feet apart.

Some of us juggled work and life more carefully than ever before, enduring Zoom fatigue in fuzzy slippers and frequent interruptions from barking dogs or children craving carbs between their own string of virtual calls with teachers and classmates. Without clear boundaries, work spilled into evenings and weekends for a significant number of working Americans. Clutter and chaos were unavoidable. Others toiled away in extreme isolation and encountered unbearable loneliness along the way.

Collateral damage from COVID-19 was enormous. Suicide, relapse and divorce were all up amid a mounting mental health crisis, while more Americans barely scraped by paycheck to paycheck, necessitating multiple rounds of federal stimulus payments. Nearly 50 million Americans, including self-employed individuals like myself, filed for unemployment benefits at one point. Many of those who kept their job have expressed a desire to quit once the dust settles.

Business conditions also deteriorated. The supply chain slowed to a crawl worldwide and commercial real estate resembled ghost towns. While the stock market briefly plummeted to frightening lows, it has since been coated in Teflon as the world’s wealthiest people had a record-setting year.

Whatever fate befell us during the pandemic, four valuable lessons involving several important topics were learned across workplaces, which may never be the same:

1. Working from home: It’s been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there have been constant distractions, longer hours with no boundaries and intense isolation, not to mention burnout, but efficiency and productivity are off the charts. But we also spent more time with family members, though familiarity certainly can breed contempt. Best of all, any stigma associated with telecommuting has been lifted. Silicon Valley isn’t the only region promoting flexible work schedules and consolidated workweeks. So is staid Wall Street, as well as scores of small businesses across their respective Main Street corridors. While many of us are now eager to escape our homes for the office and long for a return to co-worker camaraderie, what’s important is we will now have more options. Hybrid arrangements that were borne out of social-distancing necessity might just stick around post-pandemic alongside curbside checkout. Think of the larger benefit to urban areas that could see more management rush-hour traffic and less pollution. One troubling downside, of course, would be loss of tax revenue from any serious contraction in the commercial real estate market. But the benefits of working from home far outweigh any downside, especially in the growing gig economy.
2. The rise of telemedicine: Virtual care became the default option for visits to primary care physicians, specialists and mental health professionals throughout the pandemic. Employees and their dependents finally embraced this model, even though it was forced upon them. It reminds me of employee assistance programs (EAPs), another invaluable benefit whose utilization has long been in the single-digits. The rise in telemedicine has been a silver lining. It’s great for diagnosing and treating many physical and mental maladies, though there are obviously limitations with regard to missing necessary technologies for gathering and interpreting data to support clinical recommendations. But doctors want payment parity, and regulators are giving deeper thought to permanently relaxing restrictions that have hampered telemedicine growth. My sense is that employers will need to strike a better balance between telemedicine and in-person doctor visits post-pandemic.
   
3. Treating mental health: A combination of personal and professional challenges created a mental health crisis that many forward-thinking employers felt compelled to address. And it’s no wonder – between all the sheltering in place, lockdowns, masking and social distancing. Human contact has been in short supply and its impact is undeniable. Telemedicine went a long way toward making behavioral health treatment more accessible and affordable to much larger populations. And while a stigma remains, it’s lessening with each passing day. Employers are realizing the cost of untreated mental health and substance abuse is too great to ignore, while corporate leaders and managers alike know that empathy is not just desirable but almost required during these challenging times. There has long been talk about mental health parity, whose goal has been for employer-provided health insurance to be even-handed about the cost of treating ailments of the body and mind. The pandemic may help seal the deal
   
4. Financial wellness: If there was ever an area where that mind-body connection converges, it’s most definitely financial wellness. The term wasn’t even around when I began writing about the workplace, but I’ve noticed how it has been gaining traction over the past five years or so. Employers are alas waking up to the importance of this benefit, which is aimed at helping employees become more literate about personal finance, consolidate both consumer and student loan debt, leverage the power of multiple employer-provided savings plans such as flexible spending accounts, health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements, 401(k)s and other retirement savings vehicles. This is a hugely important area, especially since the pandemic exacerbated financial difficulties. But the wheels were in motion long before COVID-19 between so many working Americans living paycheck to paycheck with very little savings for emergency expenses and a culture of conspicuous consumption that results in poor financial habits. Money always tops the list of things people worry about most, including why couples divorce. Offering this benefit to employees is worth its weight in gold. ​