People across the world are dealing with a heightened state of uncertainty, and for many, a heightened sense of anxiety. Recent events are not helping. Politics are getting more polarized, natural disasters are increasing in strength and frequency, financial markets are negatively reacting to economic unpredictability, and the labor market is being shaken by everything from AI to new return-to-office policies. Companies are setting up war rooms to navigate rapid fire policy and economic changes. We have been swimming in uncertainty for a while, but the current moment feels different.
What makes it so obvious and urgent at this point in time is the impact on mental wellbeing and employee productivity. We are at a tipping point that is no longer sustainable. The United Nations Development Programme’s most recent Human Development Report noted that the number of people expressing stress, sadness, anxiety, anger, or worry is at a ten-year high. In addition to the obvious impact on wellbeing, this stress and anxiety has a direct impact on employee productivity – with Gallup estimating that stressed and disengaged employees cost $8.9 trillion in lost productivity, or 9% of global GDP, each year.
This is hardly surprising. Threats in the environment lead to a narrow focus that shuts down innovation and collaboration. Being overwhelmed by repeated, unresolved threats leads to paralysis. And when employees are already feeling threats in their personal lives, it does not take much for workplace events to overwhelm them. We have seen this overwhelming anxiety and the corresponding drop in productivity in examples across industries during disruptive events like a merger or a reorganization because of the anxiety during these times of change. We have also seen how leaders following some very specific strategies can dramatically reduce the anxiety and boost productivity and innovation. These lessons from the research on effective change, and examples like Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson or Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s response during the pandemic, can provide leaders with strategies to help their employees in the current uncertain and anxious times.
1. Share a common framework and language to help people understand the context
When dealing with emotionally complex conversations, it is helpful to have a language that allows for alignment on the issue at hand. Human beings have evolved to look for threats to ensure our survival, but we are also a species driven by curiosity and programmed to seek out novelty. This duality has resulted in us evolving a two-channel system, which is responsible for much of our response in times of uncertainty. The Survive Channel is activated by threats and leads to feelings of fear, anxiety, and stress. These triggers activate the sympathetic nervous system and, when working well, direct all attention toward eliminating the threat. By contrast, the Thrive Channel is activated by opportunities and is associated with feelings of excitement, passion, joy, and enthusiasm. These triggers activate the parasympathetic nervous system, allowing our mind to broaden its perspective and collaborate in new ways.
2. Take stock of the threats and opportunities in the environment and talk about them transparently
With this common language in place, leaders can start to work with their teams to identify the key threats and opportunities that are creating anxiety or excitement. Whether regulation and policy changes, new technologies, or any of the other changes that can disrupt the status-quo, an open discussion about what may or may not change will help to ensure the focus is on real threats not on perceived ones. Leaders are often hesitant to talk about uncertain changes because of the fear of creating unnecessary anxiety. Mental Health America research indicates that less than 50% of employers encourage transparent communication. The result is employees who feel unsupported and psychologically unsafe. In a highly connected world with almost infinite sources of information, protecting employees from uncertain news often backfires with rumor mills overtaking reality.
The adoption of AI is a perfect example of an uncertain threat and opportunity. Many organizations are starting to experiment with AI use cases and the threat of job losses or job redefinition is being discussed continuously in the media. While job losses may well be the reality with certain applications of AI, it is certainly not universal. Leaders should be having the conversation about the impact of AI in their context even if it is still uncertain and speculative and ensure employees, and customers, are seeing some real opportunities not only threats. Leaders doing this well are focusing on the use cases that add value quickly and clearly. For example, some utilities companies have started using generative AI in customer service centers to help answer questions quickly and to predict maintenance needs. Companies in other sectors like IBM Consulting have also done a good job of articulating for their employees where and how AI can be useful and what the current limits are to its use.
3. Recognize that diverse experiences and individuals lead to diverse responses
One of the important findings of the research on brain science is that we don’t all have the same response. An expert skier at the top of a challenging double black diamond might have their Thrive Channel highly activated by the thrill they are about to experience, but a novice skier who ended up at the top of the hill by mistake will have a highly activated Survive Channel that is threatened by all the possibilities of serious injury. Our experiences, personalities, and goals all have a role to play in how we perceived a certain event. In the example of AI, some employees might be excited by the prospect of using cutting edge technology to make their work easier or better, while others might be fearful of the learning curve to adopt the new tools. Similarly with return-to-office mandates, some employees will see an opportunity in learning from their peers, while others will struggle with the loss of flexibility.
The key for leaders is to recognize these diverse reactions and acknowledge that employees may well have different responses. Messaging about changes must reflect these diverse viewpoints and help mitigate the anxiety through clear, consistent, empathetic communication. Amplify the excitement by focusing on the benefits – but be careful to not overstate or overgeneralize.
4. Help employees reframe threats as opportunities
Uncertainty isn’t necessarily bad – times of change and disruption are filled with opportunities to do things differently and better. Leaders can help their teams acknowledge the threats but then focus on finding the opportunities. If new regulatory requirements are disrupting the way the business has operated, it will do so for the whole industry and create an opportunity to shift the landscape and come out on top. The electrification of the auto-industry allowed Hyundai to shakeup the marketplace and carve out a different position for itself. In its early days Hyundai struggled with quality and reliability and was largely known as a problematic but affordable manufacturer. Over the years Hyundai made steady improvements in quality as evidenced in its J.D. Power’s Initial Quality Study scores. The shift towards EVs allowed Hyundai to dramatically shift its lineup and take advantage of the improved quality and reliability to position itself much further up-market with the Genesis brand and its suite of EVs.
Even with something as emotionally charged as return-to-work mandates, leaders can empathize and acknowledge the challenges it presents for some employees, while also discussing the opportunities it presents for greater collaboration and team cohesion. A word of caution, though: it is easy for leaders to sound disconnected from reality if the reframing comes across as disingenuous or overly optimistic. The goal is not to convince employees that there are no threats but to put them in context and amplify the opportunities. An example of this reframe is in how leaders deal with “failures” – don’t minimize the cost or impact of the failure but equally focus on the opportunity to learn from it to make future efforts more successful.
5. Reduce noise in the system
There is a strong compounding effect for anxiety and fear. The more Survive triggers in the environment, the more likely it is that a new event or change will be seen as a significant threat. And because our human hardwiring cannot always easily distinguish the small threats like an “urgent” ask for some information from the big threats like a significant product flaw, we are often overwhelmed by quantity over severity. Modern organizational life has a lot of noise – meetings, emails, metrics, and policies can all activate a survive response. Leaders can help their team by reducing this noise. Distinguishing between important and urgent, removing unnecessary metrics and memos, clarifying the principles behind policies, and setting clear expectations are all ways to do so.
With employee anxiety at an all-time high, reducing fear and stress is increasingly important to organizational performance. While leaders cannot control external events, they can help by mitigating workplace anxiety and amplifying opportunities. Over the last few years, we have seen companies across industries utilize these strategies to improve employee engagement. From a health tech company that improved employee engagement scores by 24% and revenue by 26% in three years, to a pharmaceutical company seeing 50% participation rates on improvement initiatives leading to millions of dollars of savings and fewer quality defects, to an industrial giant reducing anxiety in its newly acquired companies, leading to faster, less disruptive integration.
Uncertainty is almost constant, but anxiety and unproductivity don’t have to be. For the sake of our global economy and general wellbeing, finding ways to Thrive will be critical. Hyundai did it by pivoting to electric vehicles. Delta and Marriott did it by adding clarity for employees and customers during the pandemic. IBM Consulting is doing it by giving clear guidance on AI usage. Leaders who want to survive this era of uncertainty must also find a way to lower levels of stress while raising levels of innovation to meet ever-changing customer needs.
