In This Article
(Click the links below to move easily to sections of this article)
The Turning Point
Our Time of Chaos and Uncertainty
Leadership Competencies in Times of Chaos and Uncertainty
Supervisory Support in Times of Chaos and Uncertainty
Employee Appreciation in Times of Chaos and Uncertainty
Employee Communication in Times of Chaos and Uncertainty
Conclusion
The Turning Point
An inflection point is a turning point! When an inflection point occurs in business, it is an event that results in a significant change in the progress of a company, industry or sector, economy, or geopolitical situation (Adam Barone, 2022).
The COVID-19 Pandemic was our once-in-a-lifetime, global inflection point. It was the turning point at which everything changed! Though workplace operations are returning to normal, the trauma from the pandemic crisis will remain with us for years.
If you are responsible for leading an organization, you face unprecedented challenges in the aftermath of COVID-19. In this article, I will explain steps that you can take to lead your organization effectively in these chaotic and uncertain times of Post COVID-19.
Our Time of Chaos and Uncertainty

Global crisis
As an inflection point, COVID-19 was that turning point in our lives when we all remember what the workplace was like before the pandemic crisis versus what the workplace is like after the pandemic crisis. COVID-19 had significant impact on the workplace that will have lasting impact on employee motivation and organizational productivity.
Here are a few examples of how COVID-19 disrupted the workplace:
- Employee job satisfaction and organizational trust declined due to job security, layoffs, income decrease, work break, and work and life balance issues (Zanabazar, Jigjiddor, & Jambal, 2022)
- Small businesses struggled to survive. Many of these firms had little cash on hand and some had to dramatically cut expenses, take on additional debt, or declare bankruptcy (Bartik, et al., 2020)
- Employees had to adapt to a whole new way of working; leaders had to develop new competencies to handle massive uncertainty, and human resources professionals had to play a key role in facilitating these changes in their organizations (Ramlachan & Beharry-Ramraj, 2021)
The reality of COVID-19 is twofold: it both changed the workplace moving forward and its aftermath will keep the workplace unsettled for an unknown length of time. In response to these changes, organizational leaders must evolve to get the best from their employees in these chaotic and uncertain times.
Leadership Competencies in Times of Chaos and Uncertainty
Research shows that in times of chaos and uncertainty, employees need more focused direction from organizational leaders. To improve employee satisfaction and employee retention in times of chaos and uncertainty, leaders need to be effective at several competencies.
Three key competencies that leaders need in times of chaos and uncertainty are the following:
- Supervisory Support
- Employee Appreciation
- Communication (Dirani, et al., 2020)
A tool that you can use to apply these three competencies to your workplace is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory. It is effective because it has withstood the test of time.
The Theory is the work of psychologist Abraham Maslow. He suggested that we, humans, are motivated to satisfy five basic needs and these needs are arranged in a hierarchy. He explained that we seek first to satisfy the lowest level of needs. Once this is done, we seek to satisfy each higher level of need until we have satisfied all five needs.
Maslow’s five levels are:
- Physiological Needs: basic issues of survival such as salary and stable employment
- Security Needs: stable physical and emotional environment issues such as benefits, pension, safe work environment, and fair work practices
- “Belongingness” Needs: social acceptance issues such as friendship or cooperation on the job
- Esteem Needs: positive self-image and respect and recognition issues such as job titles, nice work spaces, and prestigious job assignments.
- Self-Actualization Needs: achievement issues such as workplace autonomy, challenging work, and subject matter expert status on the job (Tanner, 2022)
In the context of COVID-19, current business research (Criscione-Naylor & Marsh, 2021) on Maslow’s theory of motivation shows that employees are most strongly motivated to work based on an organization’s ability to provide for their safety and security needs (27.8%), belonging and social connection needs (25%), and their self-esteem needs (25%). These employee preference areas from this research align with the first four levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
A discussion of each of the three leadership competency areas and how to use Maslow’s Theory to apply them in these chaotic and uncertain times follows.
Supervisory Support in Times of Chaos and Uncertainty
While employees always need support from supervisors, they especially need supervisory support in times of chaos and uncertainty. COVID-19 upended many of the normal safeguards that employees had from their workplace relative to their abilities to make an income, support their families, and do meaningful work. The result of this upending of workplace safeguards is that employees have shifted their attitudes about work.
From Maslow’s Theory, it is apparent that physiological and security needs are once again very important. The uncertainty and chaotic nature of COVID-19 brought family and medical issues to the forefront of employees’ concerns.
Two Chamber of Commerce polls of workers who lost their job during the pandemic in May 2021, and again in November 2021 showed the following:
- Nearly one in five have altered their livelihood, 17% have retired, 19% have transitioned to homemaker, and 14% are now working part time.
- Younger respondents, aged 25-34, are prioritizing personal growth over searching for a job right now; 36% say they’re more focused on acquiring new skills, education or training before re-entering the job market.
- About half (49%) are not willing to take jobs that do not offer the opportunity for remote work. (Ayala, 2022)
While it may seem contradictory that workers are choosing to be more selective about where they work following a time when much work disappeared in the economy, there is actually no contradiction here. The resignation and reshuffling occurring in the workplace reflects employees’ desires to have their psychological and security needs met in the aftermath of COVID-19. Employees want to take care of their families and they want skills and education that will allow them more employment options for continuing employment.
Steps that you can take in your leadership role to provide supervisory support for your employees include the following:
- Provide some level of remote work opportunities
- Provide income that will allow employees to meet their basic needs
- Provide educational and skill improvement opportunities
- Provide flexible work arrangements that support employees’ parental and family responsibilities.
- Promote work/life balance in the workplace.
- Show empathy and support for employees’ parental and family responsibilities
Your efforts to provide a workplace environment that meets your employees physiological and security needs while also giving them options to maintain a healthy work/life balance are powerful ways that you can provide supervisory support in these chaotic and uncertain times.
Employee Appreciation in Times of Chaos and Uncertainty
It is a fundamental principle of effective leadership for managers to find formal and informal ways to show ongoing appreciation for their employees’ workplace contributions. In times of chaos and uncertainty, it is especially important for managers to show appreciation for their employees’ efforts as employees feel vulnerable.
Here is an example of what researchers found about employee vulnerability during the COVID-19 outbreak:
“Recently, a new term appeared – pandemic stress originating from the spread of COVID-19. People are now spending a significant portion of their daily life working online due to lockdowns introduced and have easier access to large quantities of information on the pandemic, and their increased fear over uncertainty of their employment and stability of their future income often leads to stress and depression.” (Zanabazar, Jigjiddor, & Jambal, 2022)
As you collectively work together with your employees through these chaotic and uncertain times, how you treat them and show appreciation for their work efforts matters. From Maslow’s Theory, your employee appreciation efforts relates directly to their self-esteem needs.
Steps that you can take in your leadership role to show appreciation for your employees include the following:
- Provide verbal recognition to employees for their good performance. Be specific about the impact of their efforts and how their efforts specifically helps your company’s productivity goals.
- Provide visible company-wide recognition for employee accomplishments. Be specific about what was done, who did it, and how it helps your company’s productivity goals.
- Provide employees promotional opportunities within your organization as feasible. Show them that despite difficult times your company still has career opportunities available.
- Adjust your incentives and rewards program to reflect the times that your employees are facing. For example, you could use a spot award program to provide small but meaningful help to your employees. (This could be specific retail gift cards that employees can use for groceries, gasoline, school supplies, restaurants, etc. OR it could be more general purpose Visa or Mastercard gift cards).
- Show empathy for your employees’ wellbeing. Check in with them to see how they are doing.
The famous quote of Maya Angelou that says _people do not forget how you made them feel_ holds special relevance during times of chaos and uncertainty. As you take steps to show your employees that you appreciate your efforts, you will help them meet their self-esteem needs and make them feel less vulnerable in the workplace.
Employee Communication in Times of Chaos and Uncertainty
Effective communication will always be one of the most important functions of leadership. In fact, for most any problem in the workplace you will often find that some portion of the problem was directly tied to a communication problem of some sort.
In times of chaos and uncertainty, effective communication becomes a vitally important function of leadership. In the absence of effective communication, misinformation, misunderstandings and interpersonal conflict can become rampant in a business as organizational stakeholders operate out of fear of the unknown. As this occurs, a decline in trust for organizational leadership often follows.
There is often a gap of perception in organizations between senior leaders and employees in their views on the effectiveness of communication during times of crisis. A new study shows 83 percent of U.S. organizations have been impacted by the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The research shows leaders have risen to the challenge of communicating with employees during the pandemic, but only a slim majority of employees say they are very satisfied with the communications they have received.
Specifically, this research found the following:
- A slim majority (54%) of employees said they believe their organization is very or extremely committed to satisfying employee communications needs, compared with 64% of leaders.
- Less than half of employees (43% as opposed to 60% of leaders) said they believe their organization is very or extremely interested in hearing employee feedback during this pandemic. (NewsRX LLC, 2020)
Generally, employees want more communication — not less — from senior leadership during times of chaos and uncertainty. As feasible, the more information that you can share with your employees the better. Be careful however because you can also overwhelm employees or create panic by giving them too much information. In times of chaos and uncertainty, it is wise to get help from skilled communication professionals to help you craft an effective communication strategy for your organization.
Revisiting Maslow’s Theory, this need employees have for more communication from senior leadership directly relates to employees’ physiological, security, “belongingness” (social), and esteem needs.
Steps that you can take in your leadership role to communicate effectively with your employees during times of chaos and uncertainty include the following:
- Provide a clear explanation of your plans for the organization’s future.
- Be transparent about what you do know and what you do not know.
- Make time to listen to your employees’ concerns.
- Create formal and informal ways within your organization to obtain their feedback.
- Communicate consistently with employees throughout the crisis
- Explain to employees the impact a crisis will have on their jobs and their futures within the company
- Use multiple methods to communicate with your employees and reinforce your messages
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Conclusion
Since COVID-19, things have gotten better for employees in the workplace: there is available work; unemployment is low; and wages are higher for many jobs. For employees, these are all positive signs that would normally lend itself to the easing of their fears.
However, there has also been continuing inflation and fears continue that a global recession can occur in the future. Both of these trends are directly related to the pandemic. For this reason, many employees will still feel vulnerable for the near future and this will affect their morale in the workplace.
While you can neither predict your company’s future nor definitively determine its eventual outcome, there are still several steps that you can take to help your employees’ morale and motivation during times of chaos and uncertainty. Being proactive to provide supervisory support, show appreciation for employee efforts, and communicate _what you can_ as _often as you can_ will all go a long way to address employee fears about the chaos and uncertainty that surrounds them. As you help calm employee fears about their ability to meet their psychological, security, “belongingness” (social), and esteem needs, it will be easier to lead your organization through these chaotic and uncertain times.
Finally, whenever a traumatic event like COVID-19 occurs, the effect the event had on our lives remains in our memory. It permanently changes how people view their environments and how they approach life and work.
COVID-19 may be over but its effects will be with us for years to come!
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**References**
- Adam Barone. (2022, May 28). Inflection Point. Retrieved from Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inflectionpoint.asp
- Agarwal, R., & Kimball, M. (2022, August 7). Will Inflation Remain High? Retrieved from International Money Fund: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/Future-of-inflation-partI-Agarwal-kimball
- Ayala, M. (2022, October 27). The Pandemic Unemployed Survey: Why Americans are Staying Out of the Workforce. Retrieved from U.S. Chamber of Commerce: https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/the-pandemic-unemployed-survey-why-americans-are-staying-out-of-the-workforce
- Bartik, A., Bertrand, M., Cullen, Z., Glaeser, E., Luca, M., & Stanton, C. (2020). How Are Small Businesses Adjusting to COVID-19? Early Evidence from a Survey. National Bureau of Economic Research.
- Criscione-Naylor, N., & Marsh, T. (2021). Motivation to Work. Proceedings of the Northeast Business & Economics Association (pp. 56-57). Galloway, NJ: Stockton University.
- Dirani, K., Abadi, M., Alizadeh, A., Barhate, B. G., N., G., Ibrahim, G., & Majzun, Z. (2020). Leadership competencies and the essential role of human resource development in times of crisis: a response to Covid-19 pandemic. Human Resource Development International.
- NewsRX LLC. (2020). STUDY: Organizations Rising to the Challenge of COVID-19 Communications, but Needs Persist; Leaders Must Address Concerns and Demonstrate Transparency, Clarity and Openness. Gale in Context: Global Issues, 1458.
- Ramlachan, K., & Beharry-Ramraj, A. (2021). The Impact of COVID-19 on Employees, Leadership Competencies and Human Resource Development. Gender & Behavior.
- Tanner, R. (2022, October 30). Motivation – Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory. Retrieved from Management is a Journey: https://managementisajourney.com/motivation-applying-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-theory/
- The World Bank. (2022, September 15). Risk of Global Recession in 2023 Rises Amid Simultaneous Rate Hikes. Retrieved from The World Bank: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/09/15/risk-of-global-recession-in-2023-rises-amid-simultaneous-rate-hikes
- Zanabazar, A., Jigjiddor, S., & Jambal, T. (2022). The Impact of Work-related Stress on Job Satisfaction and Organizational Trust during COVID-19 Pandemic. SHS Web of Conferences.
This article is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge.
Content is for informational or educational purposes only and does not substitute for professional advice in business, management, legal, or human resource matters.