Anxiety

By Roger Travis
Founder of ExperienceLab Inc.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis have raised anxiety in almost all employees. For some more than others, however, anxiety can get in the way of rational behavior. So, helping employees stay calm and manage their anxiety is one of today’s most important communications challenges for employers. For that purpose, in a perfect world, employers would know who are their most anxious employees and be able to reach out to them with appropriately tailored messaging.

Persona^tm provides the best way to do that.

Who most needs support about anxiety?

Through a battery of more than 250 questions asked of a representative sample of 8000 employees, the most recent Persona^tm research identified the employees in the population who were the most anxious about health and finance.

The charts below represent responses to three of the anxiety-related questions in the Persona^tm research. The charts demonstrate the phenomenon that some attitudinal groups are naturally more anxious than their peers. Every question in the research about anxiety resulted in the same segments demonstrating the highest anxiety.

Solutions presented by insights about anxiety

It’s normal for some employees to be anxious in their day to day lives. In normal times, many employers rely on an EAP program that they fund for employees to help manage this anxiety.

However, the anxiety in our lives today is higher and more widespread than would be considered “normal”. In this situation, Persona^tm provides a unique opportunity for employers to help the right employees with the right solution.

First, with a Persona^tm subscription, employers get a list of their specific employees whose baseline anxiety is likely to be higher than average and are therefore are most likely to be suffering with more extreme anxiety in these uncertain times.

Second, Persona’s profiling and attitude charts help employers personalize communications about anxiety by accessing employees’ “hot buttons and benefit barriers” to increase the value of advice that employers are offering and, hopefully, reduce anxiety.

In summary, at this time of high anxiety, the Persona^tm tools help employers identify their most anxious employees, predict employee response to their outreach and personalize content accordingly.

Insights available for your business

ExperienceLab has developed a unique list that includes all U.S. employees, each identified with one of the seven research-based attitudinal segments. ExperienceLab can provide you with that list for just your employees so you can select the individuals most likely to welcome communications and move toward engaging them in appropriate counseling.  

For additional information and related insights please click to read our post on Appending Persona^tm Insights .