Employee wellbeing: COVID and beyond

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and from everybody and because what we're finding with this regional series is that and we're getting um
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representation from right across the country which is really excellent and one of our objectives with the series
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and we're going to record this session today so just to let you know that in advance so i know jacinta will turn on
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the the recording and so but we just like to to let you know and we're also conscious that you know
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today that it's it's a tough start of the year for all of us and we're now in the middle of january and you know we hadn't
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expected to be in a situation where we've experienced the highest level of them covet 19 increases in the world we don't
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like to be um top of that particular chart and but hopefully we reach that peak and the numbers will start
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to fall and but it means we're all operating in a more challenging environment and you know i'm sure you've all been
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touched by it in terms of um you know your health knowing people who have had
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and covet 19 and maybe people who've been in hospital perhaps even and people who've been believed and so
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it's impacting all of us and then more so creeping into our workplaces so i'm sure some of you are seeing it in
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absence levels and and just trying to manage how people might be actually feeling and suffering
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and encouraging people to get proper attention if they need it so yeah a more challenging time than we
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would have liked and so all i can say sort of give you all our best wishes to look after yourselves and stay safe
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and your families and before we really get going today and now luckily we do hope there is a bit of
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a light on the horizon with the vaccine but we know that we'll be a few months away so really you know trying to support
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employees to actually work well as they currently are working whether that's as an essential worker or whether they're working from home
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we think is really a top priority and we actually have quite a few well-being resources available to you
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and so if you go on to our well-being hub on our website our and you know you will you will see
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links there to us including you know an app our support helpline and some resources and we will actually
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send you out a link to some of these tomorrow and it we're also coming up to what we
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label blue monday with um monday and being labeled one of the toughest days of the year so
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if you have the opportunity to go out to employees encourage them to look after each other and have conversations and put
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well-being on the agenda we think that would be a good thing to do and we link you into some of the resources to help you do that um
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tomorrow um so this is the first um cipd event of
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2021 and so thank you all very much for joining us and it is the
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part of our regional series so i'm delighted with the work that the midwest have done in terms of collating and
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pulling this together so congratulations to the midwest committee and lavinia in particular in terms of making this happen and also
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delighted that we have ul university of limerick with us providing us with the sort of research
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and insights around covert 19 and from deirdre o'shea and um then we
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have an excellent case study and from ivor downey our general and so thanks to our speakers and to christine
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and cross who will host and the q a that we will have at the end so you'll have an opportunity for a q a
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after our particular speech so we'll be in touch over the coming months in terms of all the other activity that
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were happening and we have identified that well-being will be one of the key things that we'll be touching on
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and as we go forward during the year so you will be hearing more events and more activity around us
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on this and so far now i think that's enough for me i'm going to hand over to lavinia who's
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going to introduce the details of the event and the actual speakers so good to see you all today and do take care
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thank you mary and thank you very much for all the leadership you've displayed to us all as well it's been it you've been a fantastic support
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and both to the regional um teams and to the wider cipd community so thank you very much to
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you and your teams for that so i suppose cipd midwest are really delighted to host this month's regional
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series i hope this finds you all you know right now in the current circumstances your fault finding
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yourself safe and well as one can be in these challenging times historically each january we
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would hold a half day workshop for our cipd members in the midwest in collaboration with the university of
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limerick as we have a very very close working relationship with the university with professor christine cross and of
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course dr juliet mcmahon ironically last year would you believe the workshop focused on the
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increasing digitalization of work and the role that hr had on this digital transformation and
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little did we all know last january when sitting in ul how relevant that workshop would be
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in preparing our members for what what lied ahead during 2020 so today we are really delighted to
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continue that collaboration with the university of limerick so to ensure that we continue to support
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our members by hosting today's very relevant topic and i think uh it displays how relevant it is and the
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response that we got and with over 300 people requesting to to attend and look for a recording
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afterwards so the topic is employee well-being covered and beyond and as we now are virtual we extend a
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warm welcome to both the midwest and now due to virtual to the national membership uh of cipd
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at this point something that our local committee would like to say and i i'd like me to say on their behalf
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is that we're very mindful that we may have members of our cipd midwest who are hr leaders of frontline workers
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and joining us today is they normally would attend many of our events when we were in the physical world and we are very
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grateful for the leadership click on ceo of university of limerick hospital group and we would like to to thank all the
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frontline workers local and national for their really their heroic effort and the tireless work in the fight against covet
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19. so we just want to give a special mention for them today so now as mary outlined we have two
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wonderful speakers for dr deirdre from the university of limerick who will focus on the current research
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identifying best practice in the area of employee well-being and ivor downey senior hr director of
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regeneron pharmaceuticals who will share some of the measures that they are taking to address the employee
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well-being as both after both our speakers have presented professor christine cross from the
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university of limerick well known to many on this webinar will facilitate the q a session so with
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both speakers so if you'd like to put your questions into the chat
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christine will um christine will uh we'll look after them for you and and
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and raise them with the speakers so just to introduce our first speaker dr deirdre o'shea
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is a senior lecturer in work and organizational psychology at the university of limerick in ireland
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she is a chartered work and organizational psychologist and a fellow of the psychological society of ireland
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dr o'shea completed her phd and her master's in science in work and organizational psychology
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from dublin city university in 2011 and respectively and her
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bachelor's in science in psychology from university college in dublin she completed in 2002.
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her award-winning research focuses on work motivation and occupational health psychology she
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has a particular expertise in the design and evaluation of psychological resource-based interventions
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but her work also spans self-regulation interpersonal relationships proactive
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behavior voice and silence in the workplace amongst a lot more she has published her research in top
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academic journals and is a regular contributor to national and international media outlets
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her research has been supported by grants from the irish research council health research board and the european
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association of work and organizational psychology so with no further ado i'd like to hand you over to
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dr deirdre thanks very much lavinia for the
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introduction and also thanks very much um to everybody for being here today it's lovely to um
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yeah to connect with everybody and hopefully um what i'm going to cover over the next um 15 minutes or so will um yeah be
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useful and helpful and also um set the scene i think for some of the more practical um things that ivar is going to talk
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about um i'm following it so i'm just going to take a moment to share my screen
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um share so that should be sharing with you now i think um
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make sure i have it on the right screen so i'm not turning to the side all the time and i'm also going to start a timer here to make sure that i don't talk too
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long because you know it's any academic i can talk forever but i'm conscious that i'm supposed to be doing this in 15 minutes
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um and so as i said what i want to talk about for the next few minutes is to um take um
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a few minutes to reflect a little bit on covet 19 and how it has impacted um our
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well-being both as employees but also beyond that normally if um if i talk about worker
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well-being i i pretty much restricted to the workplace but i don't think that makes sense at the moment particularly as
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um for many of us um work and home are now the same thing um but um even if we are still going out
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to work i think what is happening in the broader world around us um is is undoubtedly having an impact on our
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well-being and and on how how um yeah we are feeling on a day-to-day basis
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um before i start i i suppose it's probably useful to make a distinction between um you know we've heard a lot in the
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newspapers about our mental health and how our mental health has been impacted and of course it has with this but um when i'm talking about well-being i'm
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talking more about psychological well-being um which is broader than just our mental
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health it's generally your subjective sense of um feeling good about ourselves feeling good about um
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our daily lives and so on um and of course work plays a substantial role in that um but um it's impacted by by the world
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around us as well um so what i'm going to do over the next few minutes is really start
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um reflecting a little bit on our current reality um in terms of um what we are facing
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at the moment um with regard to um with regard to
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i should probably enter full screen as well um just everybody can see my screen i presume can they yeah
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sorry um technological issues all the time these days um so
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um our current reality is that um when we think about um well-being we can reflect on it from
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the extent to which our psychological needs are being satisfied and from a research perspective
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um we're pretty certain that um there are three core basic psychological needs
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which amount to autonomy relatedness and purpose or competence i'm going to explain those a little bit
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and talk about how covet has impacted those and then think about ways in which from a work
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perspective um if any of you are a supervisor or a manager or you're working h
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or you can um help to um satisfy those psychological needs from a work perspective a little bit more
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um and also how we can um um yeah do some simple things for ourselves
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um to also help out with that so each of us
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wants um to feel like we are in control of our lives basically that's what autonomy is is about and we
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want to feel that we have a sense of self-determination over our lives that we have control over our lives um
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and that um we are the the drivers of our lives in a sense um that of course is related to the work as
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well where we'd like to feel a sense of um yeah ownership or control over our work in our careers and so on as well
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and that's the first psychological need the second one of course is around our social connections we are social beings and we all have this need
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um to be related or connected with others and of course it makes sense that that has been the one that we've
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probably um seen impacted the most with regard to covert as well and finally we all have um a need for
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competence or purpose so it's important for all of us to have a sense of meaning and purpose in
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our lives and of course the workplace is one of the sources where we often get that sense of meaning but beyond that and i think what what
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many of us have probably felt over the last year is of course that it's not enough to just have meaning in our work
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we also have to have that sense of meaning beyond that um and so as i go down through um
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how um covet has impacted each of these three psychological needs i'm also going to draw on
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some really nice research that has been done by um the a group called amora consulting in
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ireland um over the last year and they have
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done a very nice survey where they contrasted an employee well-being survey that they
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did in february night 2019 with one they did in april 2020 um and this first graph is showing um
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whether we feel in control of our life um and as you'll see with the black lines people are um indicating
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in april 2020 that they felt less in control of their lives um than they did um in the in february
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2019 which is pretty much to be expected right april 2020 was a month or two into
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and covert 19 and the restrictions that came about um so that's relatively unsurprising um
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so of course what covet 19 has done is that it has taken away a lot of
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the control that we have over our lives i mean who would have thought a year ago that we would have guards on the road checking whether we were on an
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essential journey or whether we were five kilometers from home or anything like that and so there has been um amongst all of
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us a sense that um these changes that have come in our lives are not necessarily ones that we would choose they're
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outside of our control um our sense of self-determination over our lives that's so important for that
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sense of autonomy has been impacted equally other things um have been impacted as well like the structure of
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our day for any of us who are working remotely um particularly now that
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many of you may be back to um working from home with um homeschooling
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and so on as well is that the structure of our day has been impacted so instead of maybe doing a normal nine to
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five you might be trying to squeeze work in before um before home school or before school
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the school day starts trying to fit stuff in later in the evening not having that same structure to your
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day um for any of you who are still going out to work um there are a huge
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amount of extra things that have to happen as well you know there's lots of health and safety stuff there's ppe that
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many of you may have to wear there's um you know certain directions or certain ways you have to go around the building
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that you're working in and so on and so the entire structure of our day has been impacted um and there's also poor quality and
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opportunities for non-work activities so a lot of the time um as well as
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um the autonomy or the sense of control that we have over things that we do in the workplace um we
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also like to have choice in terms of what we do after work or in our leisure time and so
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many people have been reporting that there's nothing to do except for work um you know all the tv programs have
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been watched all the um laneways have been walked um uh
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you know the the buy roads in our 5k have been um explored and so many people are saying that
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actually being busy at work is a distraction at this stage um and so um our choice over what we do
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outside of work has been severely limited and in some in some cases removed
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so that psychological need around need for autonomy has been quite substantially impacted over the last year
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um if we move to think about relatedness um similarly compared to february 2019
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people are saying that i'm looking at the black um lines here that people feel less connected to to
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their wider community and again that's not surprising um you know we have not been able to
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meet with people as much we have not been able to go to to do all the things that we normally
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do like go to restaurants and um you know meet people for coffee and and connect with friends connect with
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our the broader people in our community um and so um we know that people have been
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reporting a much greater sense of loneliness and sometimes also of isolation
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um but beyond that um many people also have additional demands and restrictions on us as people so
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um many people have greater caring roles greater parenting roles um there is um less division between
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those and our work roles um but for many people who are going out to
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the to work and rather than working from home there's also huge fear and anxiety
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um of having to go into the workplace and so where normally we enjoy meeting colleagues and having a chat with people
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now that is actually something that we um are more cautious about and more worried
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about and so that sense of connectedness and that sense of community that we have both in and out of work has been um
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has been impacted and ironically the other thing that has happened is of course we have less work-life separation
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and actually less privacy and um although we like to be connected we also like to have our privacy at
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times and um so that um yeah i i don't know if any of you have had um
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your children come on your um calls or my dog is a unfortunate um
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uh feature on many of my um cause these days thankfully he's not in the room today so he shouldn't interrupt with
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embarking or anything like that but we have less privacy in terms of um remote working has meant that our
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work has come into our homes and as well so that need for relatedness
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um has both been diminished in terms of our connections but also um has changed in terms of the things
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that we are responsible for um and so on as well and then finally with regard to competence of course we
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also have this need to feel like we are utilizing our skills and and um and uh the the things that um we are
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good at um in our lives and um people have also reported that they feel like they are
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um not achieving things or feeling as competent in at least one area of their lives and again we see
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that those black lines are more down towards the um not being met and versus very well compared to february 2019
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um so for many of us we've had to learn new ways of working and whether that's um learning all this remote technology
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or zoom or teams or whatever we've had to use um we have had to learn new ways of coping
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with our lives our work and our responsibilities and how all of those go together during um a pandemic
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um we've also had to learn new ways of going into work and when we're doing that as i mentioned so
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new protocols and procedures and so on um and for for many people they're reporting that that is making them feel like they're
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not making progress or they're not achieving um they're performing as well as they would normally do they're not being
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efficient and so on and of course that's to be expected um and that has had an impact in terms of
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and the extent of which we feel um our lives are meaningful and have purpose and so on as well um partly because a lot of the things
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that we enjoy doing um you know like going on holidays or traveling or going to the cinema or going out to a restaurant
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we can't currently do um and that's one reason you know where there was been a lot of talk about this idea of
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and the new normal um but i'm i don't think this should become the new normal because of course there are a lot of things that
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um have changed that we would rather didn't change and hopefully um as mary said at the start there is light at
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the end of the tunnel so really all of that is to kind of demonstrate how and why um
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we have been feeling the way that we have been feeling for the last year um i don't want to depress you because
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the next stage is actually um about how what we can do with it and how we can um use that sort of insight and that
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evidence and to really think about how we can change things a little bit for both for um anybody that we are um
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responsible for um who may be reporting into us in the workplace or even for ourselves as employees
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so first of all what can organizational leaders and managers do um again i'm going to structure it
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across these three and different the satisfaction of these three different needs so and we've talked about how our
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autonomy or our choice has been impacted in our lives more broadly so anywhere that we can give a little bit
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of latitude or we can give employees a bit of choice in terms of how they do their work or the way in which they work
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and so on and can be useful so any bit of flexibility that can be provided
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will just give us a little bit of a sense of autonomy or choice over something in our lives at the moment um
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and also um hand in hand with that it reduces a little bit the uncertainty that all of us are experienced at least
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in one area of our lives which which can be in work um in terms of relatedness it's it's
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important and i think most of you will probably um realize this um is that um the more
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we are involved in things the more we feel connected um so by asking employees what what they
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need or how they can be supported can be um a really simple way that we can actually um increase that
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um that's the the sense of relatedness or connectedness that we have in the workplace
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um and very importantly is this idea of creating and maintaining trust um and we can think about that in two ways the
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behavioral trust so that we are consistent in our behaviors and how we are behaving and what we are doing
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but also relational trust which really comes down to the idea of open and honest communication
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even when we're not sure maybe how something is going to manifest or how um you know the
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latest restrictions are going to impact in the workplace or something like that i'm just being honest about those or saying we have
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you know we're working on a plan or you know we'll have something next week or whatever the case may be um it can be really useful in terms of
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um tapping into the satisfaction of that relatedness need and then finally with regard to
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competence and purpose um you know i've talked about the idea that it's really important that we have
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a sense of purpose or meaning in our lives and that our work is one of the really core components
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of that um and so many of us at the moment are really getting a sense of meaning from our work
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because a lot of the other places we get meaning maybe is diminished a little bit um and that can come from um just
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feeling like our work has an impact or is having a positive benefit even in some small way um you know for for um i
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i often think as um lavinia said at the start of healthcare workers who you know it goes
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beyond a job in terms of what they're doing at the moment and and um going in every day must be really
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tough but the the meaning comes from the fact that lies are being saved and by their actions that we're taking
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most of us probably can't say that we're having that much impact in terms of our work that we are doing but still we have a sense of purpose and
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we have a sense of achievement in terms of what we are doing that it has some positive benefit
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some of the other things that i think are important to consider are managing performance expectations so
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um a lot of employees are worried that their performance is being impacted by you know all the
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other things that are happening happening in lives whether it's caring for children caring for relatives and
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caring for people with special needs and just trying to manage the day-to-day worry and anxiety of you know rising
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numbers and so on and so forth um so managing performance expectations and um
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you know of course organizations still have to achieve um their core goals but um understanding
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that people may not be performing at 100 and communicating that um can be very um
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useful in terms of um just satisfying that need around and competence and purpose um and for
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ourselves um you know for and for any of you who are managers or leaders to remember that none of us are experts on how to deal
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with this either and you know i think i think i read recently about one man who's 107 that lived through the
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spanish flu but outside of that um very few of us have lived through a pandemic um and in fact
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the vast majority of us have not lived through a pandemic before and so this is the first for all of us
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and why we may be nearly a year into it um you know we still all have our ups and downs we're still trying to figure
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out how to manage our lives and how to manage our work and and um our working relationships um as we go
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through um this pandemic and then very briefly um i also want to
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just touch on what we as individuals can do for ourselves um and i think one of the most um simple things we can do is
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actually give ourselves permission to be emotional about this um and to not have control over the situation
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um you know the um the department of health have been tracking um have been doing a public opinion
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tracker since the start of this pandemic every week which of course is a psychologist i'm very interested in so i've been also keeping an eye on it
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um and what you'll see is that um basically every time the numbers are high so the red and the orange one we
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experience greater worry and anxiety as the numbers go go lower with that drops and of course
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we saw up to um january this year where um basically worry and anxiety are more
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or less at the same levels or even higher than they were in march 2020 um coupled with that and people are
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saying that they're experiencing less enjoyment and life um and increased boredom um which we
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would expect because there's less to do outside of work as well um and so for for that reason um
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i think as i said it is important to recognize that of course we are going to be anxious and we are going to be worried it would be unusual if we
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weren't given everything that's going on and so giving ourselves permission to just experience that anxiety and
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experience those emotions um is okay and um most of us
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also like to have a sense of control over the situation that we're in and of course we don't have control over
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this situation um and we can talk about different ways that people
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tend to cope with these types of stressors and um and and adversity and so on
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um and outside of the specific strategies that people use and there's two main categories which
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are either emotion focused or problem focused coping most of the time we would advocate that problem focused coping
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tends to be more effective so that's where we make a plan for how to deal with something that's stressing us out and we take action you know we we have a
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a very busy time and work and so we make a plan and we um figure out how we're going to manage our
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time and then the the deadline gets met and and we're not stressed anymore
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that tends to work very well when we have control over what the the environment that we're in in the situation we're in it doesn't work very
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well when we don't have control over the situation and given that this pandemic is a situation that we don't have control over
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actually just engaging in what we refer to as emotion focused coping can be much more beneficial so for example um having a chat with
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somebody about how the fact that today you're having a bad day and the numbers are getting to you and you're worried about the
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the rising um uh infection rate and so on um can be um as useful if not more
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useful than trying to engage in anything that might um that might remove it which um as i said
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we don't have that control at the moment and then um we know that people also
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have um been saying that because of that worry and anxiety they're actually sleeping um more poorly so their quality of sleep is
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worse than it was um say a year ago before the pandemic started and for that reason it's also important
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to think about taking time for recovery most of us would say that we haven't and probably had the same type of summer
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holiday that we would normally have had we probably haven't been abroad like we might um normally do um and that's an important way of
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recovery but actually there's 20 years of research at this stage which suggests that taking some time to daily recover
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from work can be really really effective and there's a number of ways we can do this first and foremost
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is to try and not think about work when we're not working and that can be particularly challenging if we're
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working remotely and working from home or we're working on the front line where there's lots of things happening and
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it's very hard to to stop thinking about it so doing something doing an activity that
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takes your mind off what's going on and gets you not thinking about work things and can
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be very useful one way of doing that that can be quite effective is doing an activity that we
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refer to as a type of mastery activity so something that is um kind of skillful or that you enjoy
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doing some people for some people it might be exercise for some others it might be i don't know knitting or
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baking or whatever the case may be um those sort of activities are particularly good for helping us to
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recover from work um relaxation through things like yoga or reading or doing something that you
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enjoy can be useful but the core of any of these types of things is that um we have choice and control over um
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what those activities that we choose to do and that can help us to recover from work so i think i've just gone over 20
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minutes so a little bit longer than i should have been um but hopefully it was useful and um
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i'm going to pass over to iver next and then we will um i think both take questions together at the end
29:17
thank you uh deirdre that was great i certainly have been writing away here and taking all
29:23
your your points and creating a sense of meaning from work asking employees to be involved there's lots of
29:29
of good takeaways for everybody there so thank you very much for that for those insights um i'd like to
29:35
introduce you now to our second speaker regeneron pharmaceuticals in 2014 hires
29:41
their first employee at limerick and have since grown to employing well over a thousand employees in limerick with an
29:47
announcement of an additional 400 jobs last august the company has gone from strength to
29:52
strength and we are very proud to have them um in the midwest region today we are delighted to have ivor
29:57
downey join us to share uh his insights ivor is the senior director of human resources at regeneron
30:04
pharmaceuticals ireland campus based in rohingya limerick prior to regeneron iver worked
30:09
with analog devices where he has he was head of human resources for their global operations and technology
30:16
organizations based in massachusetts usa i've also worked for intel ireland
30:22
where he was involved in the startup of their ireland fab operations facilities he is
30:28
a graduate of the university of limerick so thank you very much iva for joining us today and i'd like to hand it over to
30:33
you grace thanks lavinia just a quick sound check everyone can hear me okay
30:39
we can over thank you yeah so good afternoon everybody and uh
30:44
thank you and happy new year uh to everyone from from limerick uh thanks for joining the call today
30:50
it's great to see a large attendance as we share insights and uh hopefully some ideas uh
30:56
for for people and look like everyone said i hope everyone is doing okay at
31:01
this trying time and so to get started i wanted to share a little bit
31:06
uh about regeneron i can get my screen to move
31:12
there we go uh about regeneron and the regeneron operation in limerick regeneron makes medicines
31:20
and it's a relatively new name in the life sciences business and life sciences space in ireland having started operations here
31:26
as lavinia mentioned just over six years ago and the focus of regeneron since it was
31:32
set up is to consistently and repeatedly bring new medicines to patients with serious diseases
31:38
and the types of medicines which we make are known as biologics and that means that they are
31:43
administered to patients via an infusion are an injection and as you can imagine it's a it's a
31:49
highly regulated industry but it's also one which is very rewarding in that you know you're
31:54
knowing that you're helping those in need and that you can truly transform a patient's life
32:00
we're a company that has science at its core and would be well recognized in the industry for our innovative
32:05
culture and our leading proprietary technologies our focus on a diverse patient needs and our broad
32:13
pipeline of new medicines which we have currently in development
32:19
our irish operations uh commenced in uh in 2014 and represented the first investment by regeneron in a planet
32:25
outside of the united states indeed the first investment in a plant outside of of new york state
32:31
um we purchased and dose in the midwest will know they had the former the site of the former dell manufacturing facility
32:38
um in early 2014 and since then set up on our way of constructing validating
32:44
licensing alongside attracting integrating and developing a workforce to operationalize a
32:50
large-scale biologics facility and today we have ireland's largest
32:56
biologics production site uh from which we're responsible for the production quality distribution of
33:02
regenerons products to patients uh globally we've invested over a billion into transforming the site into a
33:09
world-class facility and we've grown our team to over 1300 people now working directly for regeneron in limerick
33:16
we have a very educated workforce which uh over eighty percent of our population having a bachelor's are further post
33:23
graduate qualification so before we get into specifics of
33:29
well-being and our approach to it i think it's also important to talk a little bit about our culture and regular
33:34
life as a regenerate employee hallmarks of how we operate are an environment of trust
33:40
uh transparency teamwork and respect um with a small company spirit uh we
33:46
give people lots of responsibility we share information freely and we've little tolerance for
33:52
from necessary bureaucracy um we have a work hard kind of play-hard mindset
33:57
and tremendous respect of course for the regulatory nature of the industry in which we operate uh it's there's a collegial friendly
34:03
atmosphere across the site community a high engagement culture based on that the data that are that are
34:09
survey data that we engage in and that's what that tells us uh which in normal times this is
34:14
reflecting lots of face-to-face activities and events and then experiences where human
34:20
connection at the end of the day is at its core it would be typical for us to have
34:25
large-scale training events um all hands meetings with leaders drop
34:30
by clinics uh face-to-face knowledge sharing events um we'd have side perks if you will you
34:37
know ranging from a gym personal trainers you know fitness classes barbers that type of thing
34:42
and we typically have a lot of on-site um guest speakers recognition events for
34:47
anniversaries milestones uh employee sports clubs that type of thing and lots of engagement in
34:53
the community as well but unfortunately we've had to rethink all of this and figure out
35:00
how we can support and demonstrate our culture how we can support our employees as well and demonstrate our culture
35:05
in different ways as we moved into living with within the pandemic
35:10
so to get into the specifics of well-being there are four organization wide well-being strategies
35:16
at the core of everything we do physical emotional financial and
35:22
engagement on the on the physical front at its core it's about being active and
35:28
promoting people being active and promoting people being health conscious and creating the opportunity
35:34
for easier access to the best advice and support and help for people to achieve your goals on the emotional front it's around
35:41
education and emotional health and putting practical support programs in place to enable people
35:47
uh to drive better habits on the financial front it's about explaining to people
35:53
you know what they have and taking advantage of their their compensation benefits programs we're taking about a short term and a long-term focus
35:59
and on the engagement front it's about being proactive um in terms of communicating what we have
36:06
in place putting personalized tools in place to allow employees review and make choices for themselves
36:12
we do promote active encouragement to participate in company-led events but also a lot of employee-led events which
36:17
have taken taken root over the last i'd say two to three years as well led by your employee interest groups
36:23
we do have a dedicated space which we call the well which is around promoting a positive employee experience and welding mindset
36:34
so how do we do this again we do it kind of through four main ways the first is about being very
36:40
employee-centric you know focusing on helping the employee bring their best self to work each day and beyond um taking a data-based
36:48
approach again being a science-based company we follow the data we look at our workforce demographics we
36:55
look at surveys we look at post event feedback and drive for continuous improvement based on that for example
37:00
data from say our health giving screening programs will provide direction for seminar topics on say for instance
37:07
the heart our muscular muscular skeletal issues and we don't do this on our own we engage in
37:13
key partnerships with people who are expert in in their field and have a strong
37:18
portfolio of external partners and again we work internally with strong partnership approach with our with our sister sites
37:24
as well again communications is very important whether it's
37:30
you know face-to-face in the corridor uh screen you know utilizing digital screens on sites the
37:35
internet emails we've trialed it for that we're also we're obviously very conscious that we're operating
37:41
in a 24 7 environment and that's and making sure that we we have that we provide that access
37:48
across across all of our employee population so if we look at a normal year what we
37:53
call a normal year in 2019 you know on the physical side it would have been you know circa training
37:59
pilates couch to 5k sessions run clubs been being facilitated from the site in different
38:05
days of the week it would have been health coach programs that type of thing on the emotional side
38:10
it was around focusing on building up the knowledge base around mental health and knocking down some of the barriers around it
38:16
so lots of manager education lots of employee awareness education uh with topics covered like
38:22
you know sleep meditation nutrition that type of thing on the financial side again it's ensuring people knew the
38:29
benefits that they had and putting in place the tools to allow them to make choices for themselves and their family
38:34
and on the engagement front we we looked at additional services based on our feedback about scaling up
38:41
our our well-being or the space that i call the well and added services around reflexology
38:47
health screenings uh on top of some of the other services that we had already provide and our employee interest groups and
38:52
again as i mentioned kind of that started to take shape and they started to run their initiatives whether it be
38:57
charity fundraisers you know internal speaker series again the common trend
39:03
being like in every other organization lots of face-to-face activities events experiences where human
39:09
connection was at its core and then of course we moved into 2020 um and
39:17
you know obviously from you know when you think back at it now you know i think in january last year externally
39:22
you know watching the news and hearing about a hospital being built in wuhan in you know in eight days
39:28
um in february hearing reports about how italy was spiking and uh you know
39:33
with covert cases and that many irish students were out there on skiing trips and all of that we were hearing sound bites
39:39
about companies in ireland you know taking days to test uh their operations working remotely
39:46
um and internally you know again ourselves trying to make decisions about visitors coming on site
39:52
putting restrictions in place and those who've traveled are about to travel or you know whether we should continue with programs or on-site programs like
39:58
transition year programs in march we saw our first case of course in ireland and uh saw the
40:04
restrictions that that came mid of that month when that occurred we looked at and
40:09
designated our workforce into three categories we looked at designated workforce into direct those were needed on site indirect
40:16
on-site or off-site those who would have a partial time on site and those who are working from home
40:23
since that time we've had probably over 50 percent of our population working remotely and
40:28
working from home on a full-time basis um over the last 10 11 months
40:34
our focus you know casting back to last march was very firmly on continuing operations
40:39
ensuring that those working from the site or from home could operate as best they could this is obviously a
40:45
significant pivot for the way we operated but obviously it had to happen for those on site uh physical well-being was was
40:53
about putting in place control measures to ensure that their time on site was the safest part
40:59
of their day and that was our philosophy that meant you know scaling up temperature scanning scaling
41:06
up hand wash stations flow pads grab-and-go food so that there was no contact points or congestions in
41:13
our cafeterias instituting the wearing of face coverings early on in the process
41:19
giving people sanitizers to bring home and people really appreciated the speed at
41:24
which we moved and the importance of being pushed on science control measures which was again at the end of the day
41:30
for those on site all around their physical well-being at that time for all employees those on-site and
41:36
those working from home on the on the physical and the emotional side of things it was also putting in place measures
41:41
around additional family support measures engaging with a partner around providing emergency
41:47
backup care and elder care for those who needed it uh we had we were lucky again it was probably a relatively new startup of
41:53
having some corporate housing available turning that over to employees who needed to manage their their their movements and their their
41:59
contacts um you know they may have been sharing a house away again we turned some of that
42:05
housing over to to them to allow them to to stay there for for periods of time and obviously the it supported
42:11
infrastructure for those working from home was kicked into place at that point as well specifically on the emotional side
42:18
initially there was a novelty of those for those working for a moment that soon were off um we introduced with our partners
42:25
access to a webinar series focusing on you know coping with isolation many of the topics we've talked about
42:31
dealing with anxiety dealing with anxiety in teens and in children and nutrition to boost immunity and
42:38
general well-being in challenging times and we put in place a dedicated web page on
42:43
wellbeing resources and had that front and center of our core you know corporate and ireland
42:49
intranet sites and put in place a schedule where people could see different events
42:54
and access to tools we introduced a an easy access summary guide a one-page summary on tools and resources
43:01
uh for helping oneself and others um and and you know what phone numbers etc
43:07
people could call and you know what sort of process to follow to try and help distill in simple way um practical
43:15
practical practical measures for people on the financial side we moved to you know complementary food service to those
43:21
in sight and that was around convenience and and reducing contact and congestion in the site and we put in place a home
43:29
delivery service for our cafeteria uh for those working from from our cafeteria to allow those working from
43:35
home to access the cafeteria this of course is to help the cafeteria business which was we just have to have their business on
43:41
site but also to provide that option for employees perhaps living on their own perhaps in different circumstances
43:48
to to be able to order food for the next day and obviously paying for it as well uh through that
43:54
process um we increased our regular recognition budgets to reward the momentous efforts
43:59
that had gone on as you mentioned here we scaled up our operation uh through the second half of last year
44:05
right throughout last year and so lots of aerobics were happening through this time so again it was
44:11
important to keep that recognition not that that's that was a be all nailed up but just making sure that people
44:17
knew that that was there and we could enhance it we sent care packages at different intervals to employees uh where it made sense and
44:24
again very simple small things which just reinforce the message of of connection and you know that we're
44:31
thinking of them and putting practical things in place for people we worked with local restaurants
44:37
to subsidize take out uh from their premises for employees and again this is around
44:42
supporting the local businesses as they were struggling and coming back into operation in the middle of last year in
44:48
the june time frame but also provide a perk option for employees a retreat option for employees and families
44:54
during this time specifically on the engagement uh again we've redoubled you know this
45:00
was the from the off again redouble the amount of direct communications to all employees at home and on-site
45:06
and allowing an awful lot of time for q a and again that's become a hallmark of what we've been doing
45:11
throughout the last several months at this point and again we put in place frequent pulse surveys early on in the
45:17
pandemic to kind of get a sense as to what people were thinking what did people need what could we do to support and use that
45:25
to direct our efforts of course there was plenty of fun events you know lifestyle types of events
45:31
quizzes the bingos the cookery demonstration that type of things which to be fair again different levels of
45:36
interaction kind of niche events which which which appeal to different people at different times obviously everything
45:43
had moved online into a virtual connection and experience and all of our regular updates
45:48
and seminars and move to an online um process irrespective of whether the
45:53
employee was based at the site uh off the site so in one way you know everything changed and another way
46:00
nothing changed as we tried to focus our measures uh under under our well-being pillars
46:08
so as we look at this here and you know the future a number of things come to mind um our strategy will continue to be
46:14
centered around the four pillars physical emotional financial and engagement but like 2020 we will adjust based on
46:20
feedback and the evolving environment um overall employee experience and
46:26
well-being has evolved from being primarily a hr strategy our initiative to coming into the center
46:32
of organizational strategy bringing together members of the leadership team uh in new and more productive ways which
46:39
was very helpful um we now have a great platform to build on um as the view on well-being and mental
46:46
health uh has shifted somewhat from being on the edge of organizational strategy to be very much front and center of leadership
46:53
and management's and as you head into 2021 we know that
46:58
the use of direct communication we mentioned earlier the direct digital uh tools for engagement activities have
47:06
worked they're not perfect but by and large they've worked we've got much higher participation in all of our well-being
47:11
activities events and platforms since since we went virtual so if anything we've got and fenning did
47:17
they've got stronger as the pandemic has gone on i guess as people have got more useful so we'll now look to introduce more
47:22
blended approach for welding interventions on site and to serve both remote and on-site
47:28
needs as we as we come out the restrictions phase but again i would say we're always allowing space and time for that
47:34
personal connection with employees as well this year we'll expand our plan and work
47:40
with our employees to find the niche areas of interest and a non-work level at a non-work level
47:45
um and currently we're looking at a variety of different topics of interest um we'll continue to keep communicating
47:52
the basics uh reaffirming what we have in place and what we can provide
47:57
and of course being mindful that people will be in different situations uh and if different needs as their circumstances evolve
48:03
uh throughout the pandemic and and into the future and lastly we will uh we'll launch our
48:10
2021 program under the banner of hell to you with a focus uh for all of our employees on being well
48:16
and staying well um and look overall i would say look it's it's hard to look beyond
48:21
covet um over a much better place now versus 10 11 months ago and there is a light in the horizon you
48:28
know even the message from the the minister for health gesture in terms of the vaccine approach over the next short few months
48:35
and certainly sounds like that's that's scaling up and there are vaccines there are treatments these are being made
48:41
available you know we've been through so much we've earned an awful lot over the last year she's got to stay the course now and uh
48:47
and we will put this behind this uh finally i'd just like to to say a word of thanks to my colleague barry
48:53
healey for the leadership he does in terms of coordinating our well-being initiatives on the site and off-site as the case may be and her
49:00
wider hr team at regeneron for the support they provide in terms of making all of this happen for our employees
49:06
thank you
49:13
thank you thank you iver so i would like to hand it over to professor christine cross would you like to um lead out the questions there
49:21
christine great thanks very much lavinia that was really interesting um from both of you but i have to say ivor that after
49:28
listening to everything that you're doing in regeneron i think maybe it might be time for me to jump ship uh so uh you might be getting an a a a
49:36
a random cv from me um so i think given the at the time we
49:41
really only have about five minutes for questions and there were quite a few questions in the chat i might just ask both of you
49:47
one question each and then if we have time then i'll ask you both the same question and so either maybe just um something
49:54
that will probably be playing on people's minds is that they've listened to all that you've said about what can be done in relation to well-being at
50:01
work but you have a lot of resources in regeneron so are there some is there some advice that
50:08
you can give to smaller organizations that have limited resources on what might be some
50:14
of the key things that they could do in this space yeah yeah sure so i
50:19
um i think i think there to mention earlier on i think the first thing is to get employees in the process to get
50:24
them involved and engage engaged in in developing and looking out for some initiatives
50:30
but the the other side of it is is that a lot of um there's some great resources out there right now publicly you know
50:37
the government sites we mentioned to start the cib cipd sites um there's a lot of good
50:43
initiatives on youtube you know very simple stuff in terms of exercise and fitness programs there's a lot of great podcasts
50:51
that may be available to people online around you know nutrition fitness different things like that different topics that are out there
50:57
publicly and but that might be a process or a way to to get people engaged into this
51:03
is kind of mobilizing some employees to look at this but look at kind of what is what's available in the irish context
51:08
from the government and coordinating you know the key contact points from that perspective but also looking at
51:15
at the you know very public information that's out there right now in terms of youtube and you know podcasts and different things
51:21
like that and uh and and picking what works for that particular organization
51:27
and keeping it very simple i think is the key thing okay okay thanks iver and deirdre um
51:35
so you talked about something called relational trust when you were given your presentation and one of the
51:40
questions that has been asked is in addition to the open and honest communication that you talked about
51:47
are there any other ways to build that relational trust uh particularly amongst teams who are
51:52
working remotely yeah absolutely um so that's a really
51:58
great question actually and um we've we've actually we haven't published this research yet
52:04
but we've i have a great phd student who has been doing some research on this actually over the last number of
52:09
months and what we have found is that the way in which um we as managers or leaders actually and
52:15
communicate with employees is is really important and one of the key things that comes in there is actually how we try to manage the
52:22
emotions of those that we're interacting with or those that are reporting into us
52:27
and we can do that in a number of ways for example we can try to make people feel better which is what we refer to as improving
52:34
their emotions or we can um not really try to make them feel worse but you know sort of make them aware of the um yeah the
52:40
severity of this situation and so on and actually those latter formal strategies are less effective
52:46
and then the ones where we try to um improve um people's emotions make them feel a bit more positive rather than negative
52:52
and so on so a really simple way of actually um building that relational trust is um
53:00
to not keep reminding people of how bad the situation is but to actually start thinking more about um the positive and um how we can manage
53:07
people's emotions so that they um yeah they don't feel that same or we're not at least increasing the
53:13
anxiety and and um and fear and so on that they're experiencing but rather we're kind of
53:18
mitigating it and and keeping them going um in that type of situation so that that's actually a really
53:23
effective way um that we can build trust by just thinking about the the language that we're using to describe the
53:29
situation so that we try to manage other people's emotions a little bit okay okay thanks deirdre and then just
53:35
there's a really interesting um question related question in the chat
53:42
which was about neurodiverse employees so the question was asked about what can
53:47
we do for those employees that are neurodiverse who are working
53:52
from home or even if they have to go into work would you have any um suggestions around that
54:01
uh either of you or both of you i don't mind i i i'm on music so i'll go first if you
54:07
want to come in either please do um i think one of the challenges with um with um
54:12
i think the the question said something about the that there being a greater incidence and risk associated with
54:17
people with learning or intellectual disabilities um and then in the context of neurodiversity i think one of the challenges of course is that
54:24
um for people who do have intellectual disabilities or learning disabilities or neurodiverse needs
54:30
they are a very diverse group in the first place um and so it's hard to have a one-size-fits-all solution
54:36
um and none of us of course are medical um people either so i think one of the most important thing is actually to talk to an an individual who
54:44
may have those sort of needs and to understand whether they are at a greater risk or whether you know any of their gp's or their
54:50
doctors have said to them that they are at a greater risk um in the first place and i think that's very important and the other thing of
54:57
course is that we know um that we may need to um reach out to people who
55:02
do have more of the risk factors and whether it's um because of um neurodiverse needs or
55:07
because they just have other medical conditions and so on to check in with them and make sure that they're you know sort of doing okay and
55:13
coping um with um the whether it's remote working or whatever situation that they are in
55:19
um but i think um you know in terms of the risk factors that has to be more of a medical um advice type situation um and then
55:26
getting getting the advice there either i don't know if you have more practical um solutions maybe your suggestions for
55:31
that one yeah i think i think like a lot of these scenarios we kind of personalize situations i think the manager connection and the group
55:38
you know the the employees group connection is particularly important um it's important for everyone but
55:43
probably more important these situations the other thing i would say is that uh you know maybe there's a consideration as to whether the employee could
55:50
operate from the site in a more structured environment if that if that helped um for the individual um and
55:57
obviously when restrictions ease a little bit which they will you know that might be an option to facilitate uh to facilitate a more
56:03
structured approach as well great that's great thank you both very much i'm afraid that's all the time we
56:08
have for questions so i'll hand you back over now to lavinia well thank you very much christine and
56:14
um really at this point uh there's no doubt about it i think that this was time is probably one of
56:19
the most precious resources we all have at the moment and making the most of our time is something we all try to achieve as as
56:26
deirdre said earlier you know separating work from from from from the the the everyday
56:31
pieces of life but i think if there was time well spent this past hour has definitely been time well spent
56:38
i think i i i was here either when you stopped i was still writing way down you know tips that you
56:43
had that you had given and there's so much in it and i think whether you're a large organization whether you're a
56:49
small organization there's something there for everybody and it's keeping that connection keeping that variety and reaching out and
56:56
sometimes having a lot of things is great because you know there's something there for everybody not everybody might attend
57:02
everything but just creating that variety um i suppose working for with vhi myself
57:07
in the health care organization it's it's um i can see daily all the great work that you do outside in in
57:13
regeneron and as i said earlier we're very proud to be in the region and we're equally very proud of the university of limerick
57:19
and all that she offers so so uh very proud of uh to have both speakers here today so
57:24
with no further ado we do have a little gift unfortunately we can't physically hand it to you so but uh juliette mcmahon kindly
57:31
arranged two lovely paintings of limerick um they're not just the hurdlers and i have
57:37
to get that in now you know that we are the champions you know from the our senior herders our great herders out
57:42
there but it is a uh two lovely paintings all about the lovely great spots and limerick so
57:48
they're on their way to e at home so please do enjoy them with a heart and a half from all of us in the committee
57:53
so at this point thank you very much but i would like to hand you over to caroline ward who is our chairperson of the midlands and
57:59
she would like to make you aware of the um the the upcoming uh regional series for next month
58:05
so thank you very much and over to caroline thank you very much slovenia and thank you to everyone in the midwest
58:12
committee for such an excellent event and to all the speakers here today
58:17
and i think everyone will agree that the recent regional series has been really successful so far and
58:23
hopefully we can continue that with our upcoming event in the midlands as well the next event is going to be on
58:30
wednesday february 10th and we're going to carry on nicely i think from today's event uh it's also
58:38
in the well-being theme but on the importance of sleep physical and mental
58:44
well-being how to stay healthy in a changed working environment so i'm still in the the well-being vein
58:51
bush a slightly different spin on things so we'll have tom coleman who is a sleep
58:56
specialist and health scientist now ronan ex-nenster monster and ireland
59:01
rugby player and david gaelic two-time european champion olympian and mental health
59:06
advocate i'm not sure how i'll fit into that lineup but we have an excellent lineup of speakers
59:12
for that event full details will be on eventbrite in the next foil and and you can sign up there in the
59:20
coming days and weeks and there'll be more details on there thank you very much for the opportunity to let everybody know
59:27
about it as well and thanks for the event today
59:32
thank you everybody stay safe and well bye-bye thanks very much to you all thank you
59:39
thank you
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