Psychological Safety: A silent but crying need in the workforce today
By Sonica Aron
It is a well-known and documented fact that the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the world as we knew it in many ways. This is the longest that people have worked from home, and have been socially isolated. The economy has been severely impacted. Some sectors are impacted more than the others while in some sectors organisations have had to literally shut shop. Millions have lost employment, and many have taken pay cuts, lost on incentives and bonuses. Then there is the unorganised sector where possibly a real estimate of loss is not even available.
Even scarier is the mental and emotional impact of the above on individuals and families. Unfortunately, in our society, unlike a physical ailment, mental and emotional disorders are not spoken about easily. But they are there, and brewing faster than ever before. They are manifesting themselves in different forms, in innocuous ways, like having sleepless nights, to loss of appetite or having the urge to eat more, or the inability to wake up and get started with work, to more harmful ways like panic attacks, depression, even domestic violence.