Coping With What Just Happened

As 2021 comes to a close, one big question looms: What just happened?

Here at CU Times, we actually listed “What Just Happened?” on one of the early drafts of our 2021 editorial calendar as a potential title for our final print issue of the year. It was a sort of knee-jerk reaction phrase that came to mind when we began working on the calendar in late 2020 and contemplated how we might be feeling at the end of the following year. We didn’t know what 2021 had in store, but we knew it wouldn’t involve nonstop smooth sailing, and imagined our future selves trying to make sense of what we just experienced.

Now that we’re here, the scrapped title feels all too fitting as we struggle to make sense of not only what just happened, but what’s coming. If I had to pick four words to sum up the year, they would be hope, disappointment, ambiguity and anger. There was hope when a new administration entered the White House with a seemingly good plan to crush the pandemic, and when vaccines became readily available in the spring, paving the way to a “summer of freedom” from COVID.

There was disappointment when, like the villain in a horror movie who springs to life after you’re certain he’s dead, the Delta variant roared through the U.S. in late summer, ripping away the elation and replacing it with dread, as we realized that COVID wasn’t going away and we would have to live with it.

That letdown has been followed ever since by a sense of indefinite ambiguity. We don’t know how to approach making plans, because everything keeps changing. What should the timetable of returning to the office look like, and how do employers manage vaccination policies? What is our actual goal in fighting this pandemic? No one seems to know.

And anger has run rampant since Jan. 1 (or should I say Jan. 6?). Anyone who disagrees can head to the nearest airport or school board meeting to be proven wrong.

It’s no surprise that all of these factors combined have left many of us in a poor state of mental health. According to the results of a national survey released by NPR last month, half of Americans said at least one person in their household has experienced serious problems with depression, anxiety or stress. The CDC found that while symptoms of anxiety and depression declined in the first half of 2021 – after rising in the second half of 2020 – they remained high at mid-year. And according to a “Stress in America” survey from the American Psychological Association, conducted in August by the Harris Poll, 32% of adults are so stressed out by the pandemic that they struggle with basic day-to-day decisions.

At a time when nearly one-third of adults find a simple choice like what to make for dinner overwhelming, how should credit union leaders approach supporting their employees to ensure they’re bringing their best selves to their jobs and contributing to the success of the organization? Several thought leaders have been working to figure that out and share their findings across the industry.

For instance, Filene Research Institute’s recent two-part report on trauma-informed services for credit union employees focused on the trauma that has been inflicted on the public since the pandemic began, how leaders can support their employees’ mental health and how providing that support can boost the health of the entire organization. The research was led by Hammad N’cho, executive director for the Atlanta-based private psychotherapy practice N’cho Behavioral Group. In a webinar presentation of the report’s findings, N’cho admitted that despite his professional experience, which includes serving on a disaster response unit for the U.S. Navy and deploying disease outbreak response teams as a behavioral scientist for the CDC, he felt fearful when the COVID pandemic began. “I was scared,” he said. “I thought about, how would I keep my family safe? How will my community, and similar communities throughout the country, be impacted by the social disruption that was surely coming?”

As part of his research, he interviewed credit union CEOs and HR executives about how they’ve been managing the crisis, and was pleased to learn that many of them already had efforts to address trauma well under way. One credit union focused on transparency in its communications with employees about the decision-making process behind return-to-office (RTO) policies, others created platforms where employees could discuss the civil unrest that erupted in 2020, and many did everything in their power to avoid laying off employees, he said.

N’cho’s research also resulted in 10 best practices for leaders pursuing trauma-informed services (he recommended that credit unions choose three from this list to focus on):

1. Lead with flexibility, because each employee brings a unique set of circumstances and needs.
2. Promote open, two-way communication.
3. Support “sense-making” – understanding how the crisis is impacting people – through efforts such as forming teams who can pool together and discuss related information.
4. Ensure employees who have experienced trauma do not become re-traumatized in the workplace.
5. Pay extra attention to staff from marginalized communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
6. Focus on equity when making RTO policies and lean on the advice of supervisors, who can see individual employees’ needs up close.
7. Protect employees who have contracted COVID from being stigmatized.
8. Create a mental health infrastructure that includes resources for short- and long-term counseling.
9. Seek ways for remote employees to maintain a sense of camaraderie and connection.
10. Identify opportunities for “post-traumatic growth,” or silver linings amid the crisis that could ultimately help the credit union increase its operational efficiency.

The bottom line of N’cho’s research was that traumatic events impact emotional function, which in turn impacts job performance, therefore it doesn’t work to go back to “business as usual” following a crisis. “You have to take a moment and process the emotional impact of these experiences, because it ultimately serves to impact [the organization’s] efficiency,” he said.

If the global crisis we’ve all been living through challenged the emotions of a trauma expert like N’cho, you can bet that coping with the events of these past 20 months hasn’t been a breeze for the average credit union employee. Mental health must be prioritized over productivity goals in the workplace, because, to be cliché, you can’t pour from an empty cup.

The good news is that credit unions appear to be a step ahead when it comes to tending to the well-being of their employees, and that will result in increased engagement, better employee retention and ultimately a successful organization. Keep it up, and please join me in hoping for a less volatile, less confusing and less uncertain 2022.

Natasha Chilingerian is executive editor for CU Times. She can be reached at nchilingerian@cutimes.com.