While much of the pandemic response has understandably focused on physical health and safety measures such as handwashing, social distancing, mask-wearing and, more recently, vaccine distribution (kudos for science!), we would do well to ensure we are paying equal attention to supporting mental health.

The toll the pandemic has taken on our individual and collective well-being is well-documented. Compounding the ongoing fear of contracting the virus are the dramatic changes to our daily lives. Many of us are feeling isolated even as we continue to adjust to new ways of living as the pandemic remains with us almost 12 months in: working from home (or going to the workplace with new ways of doing things), home-schooling our children, finding ways to safely engage in social interactions with colleagues, friends and family members, and so on.

We are not only feeling isolated and stressed; we are grieving our loss of normalcy. Further, individuals who were already managing underlying health concerns or mental illness prior to the pandemic may be coping with additional stressors in this new environment.

Even as we begin to think about a future in which some of these constraints are lifted, we will likely continue to experience the toll these adjustments have taken on our mental health for quite some time — potentially even years to come. Recognizing this fact creates the opportunity to respond. Organizational leaders should invest as much energy into supporting their workforce’s mental well-being as they do to protect their physical health.

FleishmanHillard TRUE Global Intelligence’s 2021 Health Checkup: Survey of Patients’ Perspectives of Issues, Inequities and Reputation* found that nearly 1 in 4 (23%) respondents reported not being able to receive help for a mental health condition even though they felt that they needed support. This percentage was even higher among respondents who identified as Black or African American (30%) or Hispanic/Latinx (32%).

Of note, the primary barrier for access to mental health services cited by respondents was that it is too expensive (31%), followed by factors such as lack of medical insurance (25%), the inability to find a professional that could meet online or via video (24%), worry about what others would think (24%), and lack of time (23%).

These insights are useful to help inform an organizational response to support mental health. Below are a few potential considerations:

• Ensure your employees are aware of the mental health benefits already available to them — and how to access them. Research has typically shown that employees are not aware of the mental health benefits available to them so it may be time to re-evaluate how these benefits are being communicated in your organization.
• Consider revisiting your offered benefits package to ensure it continues to meet employee needs in the current environment.
• Explore whether flexibility can be enhanced through sick leave options, revised vacation policies or flexible work hours.
• Create a culture of support in the workplace. Identify opportunities to help employees feel appreciated, acknowledged and heard. Leaders are key to demonstrating this culture of appreciation and support in town halls, communications and their day-to-day interactions.
• Managers have an important role to play in ensuring employees do not feel like they’re alone: listening with empathy and encouraging them to take breaks, take care of their health — and seek help when needed. Equip your managers with information and resources to help them support employees with these efforts.

*TRUE Global Intelligence’s 2021 Health Checkup: Survey of Patients’ Perspectives of Issues, Inequities and Reputation was developed and fielded by TRUE Global Intelligence, the in-house research practice of FleishmanHillard, surveying 1,002 adults 18 years and older in the United States from December 15-28, 2020.

One question receiving attention in the U.S. is whether employers can require their employees to get vaccinated. In the U.S., grade schools generally require certain vaccinations before a student can attend classes. But can employers or the government do something similar?

In short, yes. Employers can mandate the vaccine if they allow exceptions for certain employees. That was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) determination in guidance it issued on December 16, when it said employers can require COVID-19 vaccines and bar employees from the workplace if they refuse to do so. The exceptions? Employees who have disabilities that make them unable to take the vaccine and those who object on religious grounds. In both cases, employers need to seek a “reasonable accommodation” for the employee’s position.

The EEOC ruling followed guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) permitting employers to require influenza vaccinations. There was also an earlier EEOC decision allowing businesses to compel employees to submit to COVID-19 tests as a condition of employment.

It is highly unlikely the federal government will issue a blanket mandate that all Americans must be vaccinated because that would be a highly controversial step. The Biden administration will encourage Americans to get the vaccine for the good of the country. President Biden has said mask-wearing is patriotic, and he may use similar language when the vaccine is widely available. Schools may require COVID-19 vaccinations. Such policy will be set at the state level and thus will vary.

Companies, for their part, are trying to find the right balance. While a recent Yale poll found 72% of current and recent CEOs of major companies are open to a vaccine mandate, so far most companies are using carrots, rather than sticks. Some are encouraging workers to be vaccinated by offering them time off of work or financial incentives. Other companies are partnering with medical providers to administer vaccines on-site to employees. One airline CEO has said he wants the company to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for employees. Two cruise lines have announced that the vaccine will be required for employees and all passengers.

U.S. polls in December showed 60% to 70% of the public want to be vaccinated. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey that month found that only about one-third of the public was willing to get the vaccine as soon as it became available; 39% wanted to “wait and see” how the vaccine was working for other people before being vaccinated themselves. Nine percent said they would be vaccinated only if it is required for work, school or other activities, while 15% said they would not get a vaccine.

Considerations for employers

Long before COVID-19, vaccinations were a divisive issue. A significant part of the population did not want to be vaccinated for various reasons, including concerns about impacts on their health, or for religious or other reasons. Organizations weighing their vaccine policies should recognize that this will be among their most consequential decisions, affecting workers, their families and the company’s reputation. Customers, partners, local communities and competitors will take note.

Organization leaders should consult their internal team and outside advisers to establish their position on the COVID-19 vaccines as they would any other important decision. In our Your Next Defining Moment: Navigating the COVID-19 Vaccine Landscape report, we’ll cover some of the factors that will be important for organizations to consider. In addition, organization leaders and communicators should ask themselves:

• If we don’t want to mandate vaccines, do we want to encourage our workforce to get the vaccine when it is available to them? How can we most effectively do that? Who do we think will champion our decision and who will not, and how do we address those reactions?
• How does the vaccine issue fit within our company’s overall mission? For instance, there may be greater expectation that healthcare organizations take a firm position on vaccines – when compared to professional services firms.
• When should our organization roll out its vaccine position? Do we know what others in our industry are doing? Are we effectively tracking that information? How have employees and the public responded to other organizations that already have shared their plans? And what are they saying about our plans?

View the “Your Next Defining Moment: Navigating the COVID-19 Vaccine Landscape” report here.

Many organizations, such as those in the manufacturing and healthcare sectors, long have adhered to strict safety policies. But in the past year, workplace safety has become a linchpin of employee trust and corporate reputation for many more organizations, as employees have faced threats ranging from COVID-19 transmission to altercations related to political views and more. That’s in addition to the typical risks workers face depending on their specific industry or workplace. In fact, 48% of workers believe that they currently are forced to sacrifice personal safety to remain employed.

Today’s landscape calls for a new level of intentionality around workplace safety — and an expanded view of what it means and why it’s important. Many of the safety issues companies face are not going away soon. Even with gradual availability of COVID-19 vaccines, safety will continue to have an outsized impact on your reputation and bottom line. Additionally, FleishmanHillard’s TRUE Global Intelligence “The Future of Work” study found 62% of employees want their employer to demonstrate they can be trusted to put employee health first before returning to the workplace, so it makes sense to build on the momentum of the past year.

Organizations that think about employee safety as an opportunity even after the pandemic — rather than as another corporate mandate they can sunset — stand to benefit from keeping the well-being of their workers a priority. The following best practices are prevalent across safety-focused industries and sectors and can help drive a culture of safety in your organization as well:

• Commit to safety at the highest levels of the organization. When your CEO communicates that no other metric — not even production targets or sales goals — is more important, employees will understand that safety is not just a formality, but a cultural value.
• Model safe behaviors. On top of encouraging all employees to adopt desired safe behaviors, leaders and managers should comply with all established safety protocols and demonstrate through their actions and messages that safety is a priority. Make it clear to employees that nothing takes precedent over safe work and that they will be supported when they encourage others to follow protocols or sound the alarm on unsafe behavior.
• Designate a safety communications lead. If you don’t have a formal safety lead or official safety communicator, select a member of the communications team to stay abreast of safety regulations, workplace risks, worker concerns and best practices so they can develop and implement a safety communications strategy that will keep employees informed.
• Get input from the people who understand the risks. Your workers know what hazards they face. Provide opportunities for input and listen to their feedback on safety policies. Consider a “safety council” where concerns and opportunities can be discussed. Co-creating your safety culture with employees will help foster successful adoption.
• Speak positively about safety. Teach managers how to talk about safety and why it matters — including psychological safety and inclusion. With the support of managers, equip employees to champion the cause among their colleagues. Embed safety ambassadors — perhaps members of your safety council — across the organization to create peer-to-peer reinforcement and identify safety success stories to highlight safety successes in action.
• Elevate safety metrics. Few things will fuel a culture of safety faster than tying safety targets to the performance management process so that managers and leaders are evaluated and rewarded based on how safe they keep their teams.
• Report on safety regularly. Include safety metrics in monthly or quarterly reports on business results for employees. Publicly held companies should consider discussing safety performance in their annual reporting.

What that means for brands — and what research tells us about what works

With unparalleled high stakes and the need for urgent collective and individual action, the pandemic calls on each of us to support public health efforts. And with the fast-moving pace of information and misinformation alike, effective health communication is critical.

While political leaders and health experts have an assigned responsibility to provide accurate information and implement measures to respond to the pandemic, all of us — as individuals and as part of our respective organizations — have a role to play in improving the discourse and encouraging behaviors that can help save lives.

FleishmanHillard’s 2021 Health Checkup: Survey of Patients’ Perspectives of Issues, Inequities and Reputation (a survey fielded by TRUE Global Intelligence, the in-house research practice of FleishmanHillard, surveying 1,002 adults 18 years and older in the United States from December 15-28, 2020), found that people expect companies to share in the responsibility, alongside government, for solving some of our most pressing issues in 2021. For example, while 46% of respondents agreed that the federal government and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are responsible for reducing public health risks, entities such as pharmaceutical companies (21%) and companies as employers (10%) — among others in the health care system — also play a role.

So what does this mean for brands – and how can health communications research inform our approach? Accurate and well-developed health communication can help individuals and communities better handle uncertainty and fear, promote and accomplish desired behavior change, and foster hope in the face of crisis.

With this in mind, the following are five key concepts to guide communications as informed by health research:

1. Lead with empathy. Fear is a natural response in the face of the pandemic. COVID-19 is scary for many reasons and there is much we still don’t know. Consequently, leaders face the difficult task of making people feel safe in the face of uncertainty. In these moments, information or policies that are too matter of fact be ignored – or worse.

Take care to be empathetic when asking people to take action or change how they do things. Acknowledge emotions and demonstrate concern for the impact of the situation for individuals and their lives.

2. Be transparent. Trust people with the information they need to make informed decisions and avoid the temptation to lean on vagueness or share only what is comforting or convenient. Clearly state what is known and unknown and acknowledge when facts are still evolving or likely to change. Take the time to explain not only what you’d like people to do, but why the actions are necessary. And when recommendations change, emphasize that they are based on new, previously unknown information.

3. Inspire action. A Danish political science researcher coined the term “optimistic anxiety,” which argues that “citizens must be anxious enough to take the advice from the authorities to heart and optimistic enough as to feel that their actions make a difference.” Even if individuals are more isolated than ever, appeals to the spirit of we-are-in-it-together can be critical to collective action.

For instance, in Norway, politicians appeal to the Norwegian tradition of “dugnad,” a word for joint action at a family or community level. Importantly, rather than just expressing a list of “don’ts,” aim to provide guidance for actions one can take and adopt easily into routines.

4. Think risk reduction, not elimination. Research shows that clear and simple messages may not change health behavior if they require an all-or-nothing approach. “Just say no” anti-drug campaigns and “abstinence-only” sex education are just two prominent examples. As it relates to the pandemic, overly restrictive policies may alienate those who might otherwise be inclined to follow the rules.

Alternatively, harm-reduction messaging looks for ways to reduce the risk of certain behaviors instead of asking people to avoid them altogether (e.g., encouraging masking and social distancing vs. demanding that people have no contact at all with friends or family they don’t live with). Research has found that this pragmatic, yet compassionate strategy helps people take control of their own choices and that, ultimately, they don’t take more risks than they would have otherwise.

5. Be mindful of privilege. Well-meaning health messages are ineffective if they are blind to the barriers that individuals may face taking desired actions (e.g., not being able to afford a prescribed medication, or not having access to nutritious food options). Privilege continues to play a significant role in the impact of COVID-19 on various populations — not only the toll of the disease itself, but the healthcare people receive, and the disparate impact of policies intended to control the pandemic.

For example, individuals who must continue to work in service jobs often have limited choices regarding what risk they will tolerate to take care of themselves and their families. Individuals who live alone or with depression may opt to socialize for their own mental health. And Black and Brown communities have experienced disparities in enforcement of social distancing guidelines.

While it’s important to protect populations at risk, individuals may come to different conclusions about what risk is tolerable to them. Effective health communications empower people to make informed choices and allow for individual needs and circumstances.

A pandemic of this scope and scale requires a broad, interdisciplinary response. Businesses and brands have the opportunity to be part of the solution by applying health behavior principles to communications with employees, customers and other key audiences.

Digital and social will have a hugely important role to play if we’re to beat Covid misinformation and with it, the coronavirus. Peter Wilson, Head of Special Campaigns Wouldn’t it be a tragedy if, after the miraculously fast arrival of covid-fighting vaccines, lazy communication programmes let Covid-19 continue to rage? Take herd immunity. […]

The post The next Covid-19 battle: Vaccines vs. Misinformation appeared first on United Kingdom.

There’s always opportunity in the middle of difficult times, to paraphrase Einstein. For biopharma, the opportunity in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis was always going to be whether the industry could seize the moment at which it had the world’s attention. The scientists delivered.

That two vaccines (so far) have resulted from technology that had not yet produced a commercial vaccine or medicine and that they became authorized and available less than a year since the first cases were reported is nothing short of remarkable. And while many expected the industry would benefit from a reputation boost, we have our first evidence that is indeed the case: FleishmanHillard’s 2021 Health Checkup: Survey of Patients’ Perspectives of Issues, Inequities and Reputation (a survey fielded by TRUE Global Intelligence, the in-house research practice of FleishmanHillard, surveying 1,002 adults 18 years and older in the United States from December 15-28, 2020). Fifty-four percent of those surveyed said they have a positive view of pharma companies, versus just 44% who said they viewed pharma companies positively prior to COVID.

The question is now whether the industry can maintain and build upon that progress. The success of the vaccination programs around the world will likely have something to do with that, but issues that dogged the industry prior to COVID, most notably the price of medicines and the industry’s ability to transparently communicate about price, will be front and center again soon. And future innovations, even in the most high-profile of cases, won’t capture the world’s attention like COVID for obvious reasons.

As the industry wraps up its annual (virtual) kickoff at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, the question will be exactly how to accomplish this goal. There’s plenty of reason for industry leaders to be optimistic about maintaining the momentum when it comes to perception – our survey showed people described companies as “innovative” and “science-driven” (34% and 30%, respectively), attributes that have been front and center in the last year. There is, as you’d expect, plenty still to address as well (“trustworthy” and “empathetic” scored at the bottom of the pack). Further research will be needed, of course, and the industry should use it to examine pathways to building their reputation and to communicate more effectively with their stakeholders.

FleishmanHillard will soon be releasing other illuminating details from the survey, including those focused on the reputation of other health institutions over the course of the pandemic (which did not fare as well in many cases) and issues related to health inequity across race and gender. We hope you’ll find these details as enlightening as we do.