Canadian HR Reporter

INNOVATIVE HR TEAMS 2021 SPECIAL REPORT 20 www.hrreporter.com GREATER SUPPORT NEEDED FOR WOMEN "We weren't sure just what we were asking of employees. So, we did have a temporary pay bump to acknowledge the uncertainty of that situation." Brenda Kumar, Covenant House Vancouver feel stressed or anxious (compared to 65% overall) 75% have an unmanageable workload (57%) 65% lack recognition (56%) 64% feel unable to ask for help managing stress (52%) 70% face challenges balancing work with personal demands (59%) 69% Source: PwC Workforce Pulse Survey, 2020 Work-from-home guides rolled out at Covenant House In providing residential services, as well as outreach and drop-in services to young people aged 16 to 24, Covenant House Vancouver has many employees who continued to work onsite during the pandemic. The remaining third were able to work from home. "So, the organization wanted to ease front-line staff worries," says Brenda Kumar, director of people and culture, "by providing free parking so people didn't have to take transit and decide: 'Do I put myself in a financial precarity or do I just white knuckle it through a bus ride where people aren't necessarily following protocol?'" The organization, which has about 190 staff, also temporarily increased the hourly pay for front-line workers by $2, she says. "We weren't sure just what we were asking of employees — nobody knew. [We wondered] 'How outrageous is the situation and how much danger are we putting our employees in by asking them to come into work?' So, we did have a temporary pay bump to acknowledge the uncertainty of that situation." Similarly, Covenant House provided paid quarantine leave, separate from normal sick leave, for COVID-19 testing and isolation of front-line workers. And because the list of symptoms was so long for COVID, there were at least 150 staff tests done, though luckily only a handful came back positive, says Kumar. "We really had a very stringent policy… because we're congregate living for youth." With many employees working remotely, Covenant House also provided $400 for any new equipment needed at home, along with ergonomic training and work-from-home guides. These included ones for managers to keep in touch with their teams, employees to establish boundaries between their personal and professional lives, and employees with children at home. The organization also hired an HR consultant to meet with parenting staff and provide recommendations to support their families, she says. "We were seeing that impact; we were seeing the stress [with parents] burning the candle on both ends." As a result, a social worker was hired to run a month-long group program to help, says Kumar. "It gave [staff ] support and techniques on parenting in the pandemic and beyond, in starting to think about some of the longer-term impacts," says Scian. In addition, when it came to the organ- ization's employee excellence awards, two new categories were added in 2020: teamwork and "unsung heroes." That came about because "the team- work that we saw, particularly across departments, was extraordinary. And then [it was] the selflessness, especially our frontline staff, of just doing their jobs in very uncertain circumstances and scary circumstances," she says.

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