Some Thoughts on a Struggling Workforce

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 has revealed the frailty, inefficiency and ineffectiveness of many U.S. institutions. Firstly, the U.S. healthcare system, made up of a patchwork of non-profit and faux non-profit hospital systems operating under a mix of local, state and federal regulations. As we found out, procuring the necessities such as personal protective equipment (for hospital staff) and ventilators for extremely critical patients was a nightmare, seeing states competing among themselves with a broken supply chain for scarce supplies and paying 5 – 10 times the previously established prices. What should have been aggressively coordinated at a national level – like the other developed economies who saw lower numbers of deaths and a quicker path toward “normal” – was preempted by the same disjointed lack of leadership, confusing guidelines and conflicting mandates that left the citizenry trying to do what was right for themselves and their community while unraveling in their personal lives.

The healthcare insurance system revealed itself to be more on paper than in practice. The federal government had to intervene with taxpayer dollars to guarantee citizens would be cared for while they were losing their jobs and employer-backed health insurance (or an employee’s ability to continue to pay for insurance). Make-shift hospitals, such as those found in lesser developed countries, discovered new found importance even while testing supplies for Covid-19 still remained in dangerously short supply.

The state-run unemployment insurance programs proved inadequate and underfunded to handle a mass event of over 40 million new unemployment claims in the first 5 months of 2020 – not to mention “gig” workers who found themselves exceptions to nearly every program – until federal government provided short-term intervention to shore up funds.

Federal food assistance programs were unable to keep up with the sudden surge of newly, and unexpectedly, unemployed overwhelmed the system. Community food banks tried to close the gap but quickly ran short themselves.

Employers operating within this broken framework were not immune from the impact of the Covid-19. Unexpectedly closed by states to limit the spread of the virus, their valuable employees had to be furloughed. The Cares Act Paycheck Protection Program did not filter down to the truly small and mid-size businesses as planned, so these employers were forced to bear the pain of lost business and the inability to help their traumatized workers. Many had to close their businesses permanently through no fault of their own.

Our educational institutions found they, too, were ill-prepared for a major catastrophe such as a world pandemic. The infrastructure for ad hoc remote learning was not there in many communities, especially the rural areas. Remote learning curricula did not exist to the degree needed and teachers were not trained and prepared to deliver it. Many students lacked the basic hardware to even connect.

All this as businesses and workers were barely recovering from the catastrophic effect of the Crash of 2008. We are a country of perpetual trauma, desperately in need of leadership to critically examine our institutions, our form of capitalism and our promise of the American Dream in the “richest country in the world.”

Employers are stressed, our workers are stressed, the children of our employers and workers have suffered through repeated trauma and the misgivings of what should be the natural evolution from student to worker, from worker to successful career, from experienced professional to the next generation’s mentor. A wise and established nation would have seen this “down-time” put to good use, such as workers upskilling in preparation for a return to normal, employers reinventing themselves to hit the ground running and be more competitive than ever. A wise and established nation would have seen the pandemic as a “blip” not a “blunder.”

The long-term impact of stress is still being studied, but we know enough now that it, at a minimum, alters the way workers live, think, retain, are motivated and, most importantly, express loyalty to employers and jobs that make their lives livable. With each major trauma a worker is knocked down to the bottom rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The gains made as they moved from basic safety and security toward belongingness and self-esteem, and on to toward self-actualization, was yanked from not just their lives but from those of their families.

I think it is reasonable to say that the United States has generations of workers and future workers with varying degrees of post-traumatic stress disorder. As well, those in first and second-line management, at least, who are responsible for managing worker performance are themselves quietly dealing with their own aftermath.

We – workers, employers and institutional leaders – should all maintain that awareness as we try again to recover from this pandemic experience. Anxiety, despair, confusion, lack of concentration – all remnants of trauma – will manifest itself while we work together to for a return to a new, unknown normal. Though struggling ourselves, we should all dig deep and rediscover that internal patience, understanding, empathy and commitment that might have been rendered dormant several disruptions ago.

There is a lot of work to be done and no clear path to do it. We can all hope this nation’s leaders understand that this cannot continue, and all of our institutions need an expedited, critical, non-political reexamination if capitalism is to survive. When capitalism seems tilted in one direction to the enduring detriment of the many, our social fabric tears and our form of democracy is tested.

Proactive Technologies’ helps employers build and implement a structured on-the-job training system approach to expedite each worker’s accelerated path toward full job mastery. To see how it might work at your firm, your family of facilities or your region. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer. This can be followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues. A 13-minute promo briefing is available at the Proactive Technologies website and provides an overview to get you started and to help you explain it to your staff. As always, onsite presentations are available as well.