COVID 19 Victim: Learning Opportunities When The Employee Returns To Work

Preamble
COVID 19 continues to showcase itself as a pandemic beyond the walls of the hospital. In other words, it is more than a problem of doctors managing the victims and public health, but also a problem for business leaders since it already has political leadership folding up their shirtsleeves in the battlefront. Businesses must identify with the challenges of the returning employment and make accommodation for the management of their full recovery. Being diagnosed as COVID 19 negative is the beginning of months of nutritional, physical, and mental well-being for the victim.

Learning Is A Smart Managerial Ethic

Clearly, the company has a responsibility to inform all parties about someone having tested positive for COVID 19 in a particular area of the building. They did it all the time in this company. However, at no time was I able to clearly identify who was involved. The same manager had been quarantined twice for being in contact with a potentially infected person within and outside of the workplace. Therefore, she should be more informed about potential stigma that may be associated with COVID disease victims. In fact, she is responsible for the company-wide publicity of my name says my friend. Her body language and her rantings confirm that. She had suggested that my friend was unwillingly to test, and it was her insistence that forced the discovery of his positive status; thereby saving everyone from getting infected. Yet, my friend will not confess about the source of an infection that simultaneously incapacitated he and his wife.

The managers and the contractors in the building knew the victim by name but also his workmates who should not have known. Certainly, some of them shared the information with their friends, it is expected workplace that this manager should have considered. Sadly, it is not limited to small gossip. Her immaturity is a careless breach of leadership ethics, irresponsible but also has provoked enmity between her and my friend, who now sells her to anyone listening as most unreliable and foolish. By workplace cultural expectations, my friend was surprised to discover that others nursed ill-feelings for their boss for different individual reasons. He found that many of his colleagues have been looking over their shoulders for opportunities to transfer to other departments, away from her.

Effective management includes empathy with the victim while protecting the health of other employers. There is no template for handling these matters but when emotions can contaminate tactical decisions, it may have been smarter for her to seek the counsel of her superiors. There is room for everyone to learn from the social implications of this testing pandemic that is becoming ubiquitous. New facts emerge everyday and the astute manager who cares about her reports and production efficiency must learn the short-term and long-term effects of the diseases on her staff.

Going forward, my friend has chosen to document similar discriminatory practices and approach senior management with his concerns. That does not look good for the entire company if it gets out of hand.

Conclusion
The employee returning to work following a COVID 19 has nutritional, physical and mental challenges and must be managed as such. They will not be allowed to return to work if they were still infectious, therefore, attitudes that suggest that people must interact with them from a distance can traumatic. Being diagnosed as COVID 19 negative is the beginning of months of nutritional, physical, and mental recovery that must challenge his supervisor. The smart solution is in caring to learn, the care helps healing rather being pushed towards a terminal catastrophe.

Author:
Noah The Cultist, author of Target The Executive Suite studies the influence of workplace culture on career growth within business organizations. He reaches out to young managers for mentoring at various levels.