You're halfway through your Monday morning standup when someone's phone buzzes. Then another. Within seconds, everyone's glancing at breaking news about mass layoffs in your industry. Someone asks if your company is affected. You don't know yet. But you still have quarterly targets to hit, projects to ship, and a team that's now wondering if they should update their resumes.
This is the new reality of leadership. So, how to manage it all? The truth is, your team can stay productive during crisis by leading with compassion and implementing smart systems. Here's how to save hours per person every week while protecting their well-being.
The business case for compassionate leadership during crisis
Compassionate leadership doesn't come at the expense of productivity. Empathetic approaches directly support productivity and resilience. Psychological safety, where employees feel empowered to speak their mind and share ideas, is vital to team success.
The financial impact is substantial. Every $1 invested in treating depression or anxiety yields a $4 return in workplace productivity. Meanwhile, mental health absences increased by 300% from 2017 to 2023.
High-performing collaborative teams are up to 25% more productive than less collaborative counterparts. The following strategies will help you build that kind of high-performing team environment while protecting what matters most: your people.
18 research-backed strategies for motivating colleagues during crises
1. Acknowledge the elephant in the room
As a team leader, honesty goes a long way. 70% of workers affected by recent policy changes report significant job insecurity stress. If you're upfront about economic uncertainties, organizational changes, or market pressures, you'll make your colleagues feel less alone.
Show some vulnerability. If you're honest about why a news item is troubling you, you empower others to speak their truth. This creates psychological safety where team members feel comfortable sharing their own concerns and challenges.
2. Provide mental health resources
Mental health drives productivity. Mental health drives productivity. Workers with poor mental health have 12 days of unplanned absences annually versus 2.5 days for those with good mental health.
Invest in evidence-based interventions:
- Mental health benefits deliver a pooled ROI of 2.3x, approximately $159 per employee per month
- CBT, mindfulness programs, and stress management delivered digitally demonstrate measurable effectiveness
- Psychological safety is the most critical factor
Create recovery-focused policies. While 97% of employers offer mental health coverage, only 55% of allocated PTO gets used. Proactively encourage time off through mandatory minimum usage policies.
Provide these specific resources to support team mental health:
- Employee assistance programs
- Subsidized clinical screenings
- Self-assessment tools
- Mental health insurance
These resources create psychological safety that enables sustained productivity.
3. Have regular check-ins
Even with an open-door policy, team members may hesitate to speak their mind without scheduled check-ins. These should be low-stakes meetings where you ask employees how they're feeling, if they're facing challenges, and how you can help.
Structure these conversations around listening rather than directing. Ask open-ended questions and give team members space to share what's really on their mind. Regular touchpoints build trust and help you identify issues before they become crises.
4. Encourage time off
American knowledge workers don't use enough vacation days. As mentioned, 55% leave their PTO unused annually, creating substantial financial liabilities.
Time off improves focus, reduces stress, and supports mental health. Recovery periods significantly increase employee vigor and performance capacity.
Plead with your team members to use all their PTO. Model the behavior yourself by scheduling time completely away from work. Consider implementing mandatory minimum usage policies to ensure everyone takes genuine breaks.
5. Lead by example
You can preach self-care and good communication to your team. But if you're not heeding the advice yourself, it won't catch on.
Your health directly impacts your team's performance. When you get good sleep, exercise, take time off, and carve out time for recreational activities, you'll have the energy to make better decisions. Show your team what sustainable work practices look like by living them yourself.
6. Celebrate wins and lessons
Employees want to feel valued. Recognition directly impacts retention and engagement. Here's how to make recognition effective:
- Establish regular, systematic approaches including public recognition
- Document achievement records
- Tie specific appreciation to concrete contributions
Recognizing how teams adapt through challenges builds psychological resilience. Don't just celebrate perfect outcomes – acknowledge the learning and growth that happens when teams navigate difficult situations.
7. Support remaining employees after layoffs
Maintaining team productivity after layoffs is challenging. 73% of employees reported that work-related mental health struggles hurt their performance.
First 30 days:
- Hold transparent meetings addressing workload redistribution
- Acknowledge emotional impact
- Establish clear priorities
- Provide access to mental health resources
Days 31-60:
- Implement regular check-ins
- Create opportunities for voicing concerns
- Allow productivity fluctuations
- Begin cross-training initiatives
Days 61-90:
- Measure effectiveness using outcome-based metrics
- Celebrate small wins
- Assess workload sustainability
- Begin career development discussions
8. Implement non-financial motivation
When raises are frozen, get creative. 41% of employers report increased productivity from hybrid working.
These cost-effective tactics maintain motivation without increasing compensation:
- Flexibility: Offer preferred work arrangements.
- Professional development: Provide access to courses or mentoring
- Recognition: Highlight work in company communications
- Autonomy: Give decision-making authority over projects
- Career pathways: Create advancement plans
These approaches demonstrate investment in employees while controlling costs.
9. Provide growth opportunities
When teams face uncertainty, work can provide meaningful structure. This depends on leaders creating clear frameworks, explicit expectations, and genuine opportunities for growth.
If colleagues can envision a career track, they'll work with greater purpose. Employees with mental health benefits have a 15 percentage point higher retention rate. Create transparent pathways for advancement and skill development to give team members something positive to work toward.
10. Set crisis-appropriate goals
Traditional goal-setting approaches need adjustment during high-stress periods. Shift from time-based to outcome-based metrics.
Use these crisis-appropriate frameworks to set realistic expectations:
- Focus on outcomes: Measure deliverables and business impact rather than hours worked
- Establish realistic baselines: Expect 20-40% productivity decline during high-stress periods
- Create "good enough" standards: Define minimum viable outcomes
- Measure team resilience: Track engagement scores and psychological safety metrics
These frameworks acknowledge reality while maintaining forward momentum.
11. Strip away inessential meetings
Most meetings accomplish less than they should. The real problem isn't just the time spent in conference rooms – it's the fragmented focus that comes from constant context-switching. When your calendar fills with back-to-back meetings, your team loses the deep work time needed for meaningful progress.
Start by auditing your recurring meetings. Ask whether each one still serves its original purpose, or if it's persisted out of habit. Many meetings can become asynchronous updates or quick Slack threads instead.
Optimize your meeting culture with these practices:
- Implement "no-meeting" blocks
- Conduct systematic audits
- Default to 25 or 45-minute meetings
- Require written agendas
- Track decision velocity
These changes reclaim focus time for deep work.
12. Trust asynchronous work
One of the last things you want to do is micromanage. You want to be aware of roadblocks so you can help, but you don't need constant updates.
Asynchronous approaches work. Stanford's trial demonstrated hybrid models achieved equal productivity, equal promotion likelihood, and 33% reduction in turnover.
Implement these best practices for async work:
- Establish response SLAs: Critical (2 hours), High priority (same day), Normal (24-48 hours), Low (one week)
- Documentation-first culture: Make writing primary, meetings exceptions
- Time zone-agnostic planning: Eliminate synchronous dependencies
- Clear channel protocols: Define email versus chat versus video
Give employees autonomy to implement time-blocking practices in ways best suited to their rhythms.
13. Lighten workloads when possible
During sustained workplace challenges, when employees are managing stress and mental health concerns, revisit your expectations about what normal productivity looks like.
Nearly 80% say their response to "How are you?" is "Busy", quantifying the distinction between busyness and productivity.
During check-ins, listen to whether team members have thoughts on improving workflows. High-performing collaborative teams are 25% more productive because they collectively eliminate unnecessary steps. Empower your team to identify and remove wasteful processes.
14. Create centralized knowledge hubs
Information scattered across multiple platforms creates friction and wastes time. Tools like Coda help teams centralize their documentation, workflows, and project tracking in one place, reducing the constant context-switching that drains productivity.
A centralized knowledge hub ensures everyone has access to the information they need, when they need it, without endless searches or interrupting colleagues. This becomes especially critical during crises when clear, accessible information helps teams stay aligned and move quickly.
15. Optimize email management
Knowledge workers face a critical challenge: they handle tons of emails daily and spend 28% of their workday on email. After an interruption, it takes time to regain focus, and high context-switch environments lead to 40% productivity loss.
The solution starts with better email tools. Superhuman is the most productive email app ever made. It helps you fly through your inbox and make email feel good again.
With Split Inbox, keyboard shortcuts, and AI-native features, Superhuman eliminates the friction that slows teams down. Less time on email chaos means more time for collaborative work and concentrated tasks that matter.
Teams using Superhuman save 4 hours per person every week, respond 12 hours faster, and handle twice as many emails in the same amount of time.Try Superhuman today
16. Survey team communication preferences
Survey your team about ideal communication. Questions can include:
- Favorite collaboration tools
- Email habits
- Preferred channels
- Meeting expectations
- Decision-making approaches
Use this feedback to create communication standards that work for your specific team culture. What works for one organization may not work for another, so base your protocols on actual team preferences rather than assumptions.
17. Emphasize digital wellness
Your team's well-being matters. A great way to promote wellness is to minimize digital distractions.
Set explicit response time expectations so employees won't immediately respond to emails. Organizations should establish clear urgency tiers: critical responses within 2 hours, high priority same day, normal 24-48 hours, low priority one week.
Superhuman's Split Inbox helps teams prioritize automatically, so urgent messages never get buried while less critical emails wait for proper attention. This reduces the constant pressure to check and respond immediately, giving team members space to focus on deep work.
18. Make communication handbooks accessible
If a team member is confused about contacting a colleague, they should quickly find guidance. A clear team handbook helps emphasize work culture and establish response timeframes.
Consider using an intranet like Notion, Confluence, or Lattice. Document everything from communication preferences to escalation paths to decision-making processes, making it easy for team members to find answers without interrupting others.
The future of team productivity
As we navigate 2025 and beyond, work continues to evolve. This demands new approaches to leadership, communication, and productivity measurement. Organizations that thrive recognize productivity isn't about working harder: it's about creating sustainable systems supporting individual well-being and collective achievement.
The most critical investment is in tools that eliminate productivity friction. Email management represents 28% of knowledge workers' time and creates constant interruptions. By implementing structured systems, you free your team to focus on high-value work.
Regain your focus and win back time with Superhuman
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