Human Resource Management
“Amid the societal calamity around this latest pandemic wave, we as a public are not nearly as worried about running out of the most essential resource keeping us going: nurses. Nurses, the backbone of the Canadian health care system, are working under conditions that are brutal and unsustainable. Many will experience burnout, or leave the profession altogether. But the weightiest burden will undoubtedly be suffered by patients themselves.”
“We are falling far short of the gold standard for nursing our sickest patients in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) at a time when the number of these patients is increasing daily. That standard, in Canada and internationally, is a model of nursing that anticipates and reflects the needs of the sickest patients; in short, one nurse for one patient. We are nowhere near meeting that standard consistently. Instead of one nurse looking after one critically ill patient, one nurse often has to look after two or three or four such patients. In ICUs, this is called a ‘doubles shift.’ When this happens, nurses skip much needed breaks and meals; many stay hours beyond their regular 12-hour shift to help transition to the next team of nurses, who are also short-staffed.”
“It doesn’t help that prior to the pandemic, our nurses were already grappling with psychological distress. Pre-COVID data revealed that almost one third of working Canadian nurses reported clinically significant symptoms of burnout. After the first wave of COVID, a 2020 study from the United States reported severe PTSD in 55 per cent of nurses. It’s not a reach to presume these statistics will worsen as COVID rages on. And when nurses are suffering, their patients will too.”
“Nursing attrition is another devastating blow; an extensive survey of nurses done in the U.S. in 2018 showed that more than 30 per cent of nurses who left the profession did so because of burnout. Fewer nurses mean more of those doubles shifts and increased errors, compromised standards of care and bad outcomes for patients. …. While many nurses will leave, many more will stay and continue to struggle, with some opting for harmful coping strategies. This was seen in follow-up of frontline workers of the 2003 SARS crisis, where many mitigated the long-term effects of post-traumatic symptoms and psychological distress with self-isolation, excessive smoking or alcohol use.”
The Globe and Mail, April 23, 2021: “Nurses are an essential resource. When they burn out, patients suffer,” by Shelly Dev
Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2019: Nursing in Canada, 2019 A Lens on Supply and Workforce (63 pages, PDF)
Statistics Canada, July 30, 2018: Time use: Total work burden, unpaid work, and leisure by Melissa Moyser and Amanda Burlock (22 pages, PDF)
Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, June 16, 2020: Mental Disorder Symptoms Among Nurses in Canada (93 pages, PDF)
Dall’Ora, C., Ball, J., Reinius, M. et al. (2020). Burnout in nursing: a theoretical review. Human Resources for Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-020-00469-9
Shah M.K., Gandrakota N., Cimiotti J.P., Ghose N., Moore M., Ali M.K. (2021). Prevalence of and Factors Associated With Nurse Burnout in the US. JAMA Network Open. https://doi.org.10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.36469
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“Morneau Shepell, a leading provider of total wellbeing, mental health and digital mental health services, today released its monthly Mental Health Index™ report, revealing a negative mental health score among Canadians for the twelfth consecutive month. The Mental Health Index™ score for March is -11.2. Negative scores indicate a lower level of mental health compared to the pre-2020 benchmark.”
“The March 2021 score is similar to the score in April 2020 (-11.7) and slightly higher than February 2021 (-11.5). At the one-year mark, while the majority of sub-scores have fluctuated throughout the pandemic, the score for psychological health has steadily declined over the last 12 months, decreasing from -0.4 in April 2020 to -3.9 in March 2021. This indicates that Canadians’ view of their overall mental health status is at its lowest point. The score for isolation (-12.0) is worse now than at any prior point in the pandemic.”
“Canadian managers are experiencing greater levels of mental distress than non-managers as a result of the extraordinary changes implemented in the workplace throughout the pandemic. … ‘People leaders and managers have struggled to cope throughout the pandemic. These individuals have been tasked with managing the shifting responsibilities and operational changes in their everyday role, while dealing with the same personal and emotional disruption as everyone else,’ said Paula Allen, global leader and senior vice president, research and total wellbeing. 'Resilient leaders will be critical as businesses redefine themselves and navigate the return to the workplace. As we identify what success looks like in the post-pandemic landscape, organizations need to focus on their leadership group. Additional skills and support are required given the increased demands, which the majority of managers believe will remain after the pandemic.’”
Financial Post, April 22, 2021: “Canadian managers experiencing greater levels of mental distress due to pandemic”
Morneau Shepell: Mental Health Index, March 2021 (37 pages, PDF)
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“For all the advantages and disadvantages of remote work, video calls have emerged as such a widespread pain point that the term ‘Zoom fatigue’ has entered our lexicon — a catchall phrase referring to the tiredness related to video calls on any number of platforms. Now, research from Stanford University published on Tuesday found that women experience significantly more Zoom fatigue than men. The research, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, suggests that video calls simply amplify the longstanding gender dynamics in group settings and exacerbate an already wide gender stress gap, with women consistently reporting more stress and stress-related health conditions than men, according to the American Psychological Association.”
“During in-person meetings, people aren’t staring into your face from a close distance — some might be typing up notes, some might be reading. But video calls disrupt that natural rhythm, forcing everyone logged in to stare at each other, a phenomenon known as 'hyper gaze.’ 'From an evolutionary standpoint, if somebody was very close to you and staring right at you, this meant you were going to mate or get in a fight,’ … And constantly being on high alert creates stress. During in-person meetings, people also don’t feel the need to exaggerate their nonverbal behavior — nodding, thumbs up, clapping — nor are people forced to stare at themselves. Again, video calls upend those norms.”
“The self-view in video calls — which is effectively a digital mirror — seems to be replicating the mirror anxiety effect online… Women also reported being far more conscious of their nonverbal cues than men, which the researchers suggest adds to cognitive load (the number of things your brain can process at once to carry out a certain task; the more things you have to process, the harder the task at hand). It turns out that adding more tasks — like sending someone a thumbs up on a Zoom call — to a woman’s already overloaded cognitive load and increasing her already-high levels of emotional labor (the effort it takes to be a polite and caring co-worker) can be debilitating.”
“Emily Falk, professor of communication, psychology and marketing, and director of the Communication Neuroscience Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, who looked over the paper, found the Stanford research unsurprising — because it reflects and confirms the many studies on gender dynamics that make in-person meetings stressful. … 'It’s correlational data and there could be other potential variables at play here,’ she said. 'When we’re feeling exhausted right now, how full is our emotional or mental tank to begin with?’”
The New York Times, April 13, 2021: “Zoom Burnout Is Real, and It’s Worse for Women,” by Alisha Haridasani Gupta
Fauville, G., Luo, M., Muller Queiroz, A. C., Bailenson, J. N., & Hancock, J. (2021). Nonverbal Mechanisms Predict Zoom Fatigue and Explain Why Women Experience Higher Levels than Men. Social Science Research Network. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3820035
Fauville, G., Luo, M., Muller Queiroz, A. C., Bailenson, J. N., & Hancock, J. (2021). Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue Scale. Social Science Research Network. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3786329
Biondi, F. N., Cacanindin, A., Douglas, C., & Cort, J. (2020). Overloaded and at Work: Investigating the Effect of Cognitive Workload on Assembly Task Performance. Sage Journals. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720820929928
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“Not surprisingly, the proportion of adults reporting positive mental well-being was lower in studies conducted in 2020 compared with those conducted previous year. Fewer than 6 in 10 (55%) respondents to a Canadian Perspectives Survey in July 2020 reported excellent or very good mental health compared with 7 in 10 (68%) respondents to the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) in 2019. Prior to COVID-19, youth aged 15 to 24 were the least likely of any age group to report excellent or very good mental health, and by July 2020 they also reported the largest declines in mental health – a 20 percentage point reduction from 60% in 2019 to 40% in July 2020.”
“Some populations in Canada were observed to report lower mental well-being during the pandemic compared with others. For example, almost 70% of gender-diverse participants responding to a Statistic’s Canada crowdsourcing survey in April and May 2020 reported fair or poor mental health, compared with 25.5% of female participants and 21.2% of male participants. The proportion of gender-diverse participants who reported symptoms consistent with moderate/severe generalized anxiety disorder was double (61.8%) that of female participants (29.3%) and triple that of male participants (20.5%).”
“Persons designated as visible minorities were more likely than White people to report both poor mental health (27.8% vs. 22.9%) and symptoms consistent with ‘moderate’ or 'severe’ generalized anxiety disorder (30.0% vs. 24.2%).One report indicated that Indigenous women may have been particularly affected by the challenges of the pandemic, with 48% having reported symptoms consistent with moderate or severe generalized anxiety disorder.”
“Relationships between changes in mental health and employment status were also observed, with declines between 2019 and March 2020 across employed and unemployed persons alike. The group whose mental health appeared most heavily hit was those who reported being 'employed but absent from work due to COVID-19.’ However, this group also reported the largest recovery by July 2020, perhaps associated with the impacts of COVID relief programs such as the CERB.”
Statistics Canada, April 15, 2021: Canadians’ Well-being in Year One of the COVID-19 Pandemic by Sarah Charnock, Andrew Heisz, and Jennifer Kaddatz, Nora Spinks and Russell Mann (15 pages, PDF)
The Harris Poll, 2021: The Great Awakening: A year of life in the pandemic as documented by The Harris Poll (40 pages, PDF)
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“Despite almost two decades of accessibility laws and their enforcement by human rights tribunals, many Canadian workplaces still don’t do especially well in hiring or retaining people with disabilities. For this group the employment rate is about 49%, compared to 79% for the general population. Yet advocates like Smith hope the pandemic has been a societal wake-up call on chronic workplace issues ranging from mental health stigmas to allowing telework to ‘presenteeism,’ the once accepted but now epidemiologically scorned practice of getting sick but showing up at the office anyway. Others say elevated levels of pandemic-related depression and anxiety are triggering a wave of requests for stress leave, despite work-from-home arrangements.”
“New research from the University of Calgary and Queen’s University, though conducted before COVID-19, offers some important insights into the ways in which managers and companies are dealing with physically and psychologically disabled employees. … Their research, based on interviews with 240 managers, found that employees with physical disabilities tend to fare better than those with psychiatric illnesses, who still tend to face increased skepticism, ostracism and doubts about their commitment to the workplace.”
“Donna Ferguson, a clinical psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health who specializes in work stress, says employees returning after a leave related to a condition such as stress or depression often face strained relationships with their managers or co-workers. … One way of mitigating negative responses and smoothing the transition, according to [the study], is to limit the medical information shared with managers. Their surveys showed that managers dealing with employees who have psychiatric disorders worry about danger and disruption. If, however, the medical information provided to the employer only states that a diagnosis is 'pending,’ managers tend to treat the individual no differently than they would a worker with physical disabilities. Yet despite the benefits of this workaround, the practice of withholding some medical data is legally ambiguous.”
The Globe and Mail, April 25, 2021: “Reuniting with the flock: New research highlights the challenges faced by employees returning after a medical leave,” by John Lorinc
Lyubykh, Zhanna & Turner, Nick & Barling, Julian & Reich, Tara & Batten, Samantha. (2020). Employee disability disclosure and managerial prejudices in the return-to-work context. Personnel Review. ahead-of-print. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/PR-11-2019-0654
Sang K, Calvard T, Remnant J. Disability and Academic Careers: Using the Social Relational Model to Reveal the Role of Human Resource Management Practices in Creating Disability. Work, Employment and Society. April 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017021993737
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“The problem with these [calls to defund the police] is that they’re presented as solutions to police abuse without an appreciation that some element of coercive authority will still be required in society. Consequently, these efforts are unlikely to be successful. Many of the calls for drastic change highlight the failure of police reform efforts. While many attempts at change have met with limited success, I suggest the reason for these outcomes is not because change is impossible; it’s more to do with an unwillingness to confront systemic issues within police forces.”
“From the early days of training, police recruits are socialized by war stories that glamorize the dangerous aspects of police work and place an exaggerated focus on the mission of police to deal with danger as the supposed gatekeepers of society. Ultimately, these narratives shape expectations of what it means to be a 'real’ police officer. For some individuals, becoming a real police officer means doing the dirty work that no one else wants to do, including whatever it takes to put 'bad guys’ in jail.”
“But rather than promoting an image of police working with communities to solve problems, this emphasis on physicality and fighting crime has helped craft the image of the 'warrior cop’ who is ready to do battle and is isolated from the public. The continued preoccupation with danger and crime control means that aggression, competitiveness and physical action are often associated with the image of the ideal police officer.”
The Conversation, April 6, 2021: “Defund the police? Instead, end toxic masculinity and ‘warrior cops’” by Angela Workman-Stark
New Zealand Controller and Auditor-General, December 2017: Response of the New Zealand Police to the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct: Final monitoring report (82 pages, PDF)
An Issue of Police Training?
“Police in the United States receive less initial training than their counterparts in other rich countries—about five months in a classroom and another three or so months in the field, on average. Many European nations, meanwhile, have something more akin to police universities, which can take three or four years to complete. European countries also have national standards for various elements of a police officer’s job—such as how to search a car and when to use a baton. The U.S. does not.”
“The mix of instruction given in police academies speaks volumes about their priorities. The median police recruit receives eight hours of de-escalation training, compared with 58 hours of training in firearms, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank for police executives. … American police academies are also light on training in 'soft skills,’ such as how to communicate or use emotional intelligence to see a situation clearly. … American cops are poorly prepared for trauma on the job, too: They get just six hours of training in stress management, compared with 25 hours in report-writing, according to a 2016 study by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
The Atlantic, April 22, 2021: “American Police Are Inadequately Trained,” by Olga Khazan
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, June 19, 2019: Police Education and Training Systems in the OSCE Region (164 pages, PDF)
Police Executive Research Forum, 2016: Guiding Principles On Use of Force (136 pages, PDF)
The Marshall Project, July 22, 2020: “One Roadblock to Police Reform: Veteran Officers Who Train Recruits,” by Simone Weichselbaum
Getty RM, Worrall JL, Morris RG. (2016). How Far From the Tree Does the Apple Fall? Field Training Officers, Their Trainees, and Allegations of Misconduct. Journal of Conflict Resolution. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128714545829
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