On March 25, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Ranking Member Richard Burr (R-N.C.) issued a call to stakeholders requesting solutions on how to rebuild the workforce following the COVID-19 pandemic. The call suggests the information gained from this outreach may be used to build a package of bipartisan workforce solutions in the near future.
APA collaborated on the recommendations with APA’s Div. 14 (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology—SIOP) and Div. 13 (Society for Consulting Psychology).
APA and SIOP offered several recommendations on how the HELP Committee can shape the post COVID-19 workplace (PDF, 198KB), including:
- Strengthening Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) programs that prioritize designing and re-designing workplaces and workspaces that are safe, healthy, and productive;
- Encouraging incentives for organizations to consider “permanent” remote work options when this can be accomplished without reducing productivity, and
- Incentivizing employer-supported mental health and family counseling support for families who have suffered significant stress and disruption due to COVID-19.
The response also described the impact on women in the workforce, noting that millions of women have left the workforce since February 2020, as well as the rapid transformation of the workforce felt by all workers. The response highlighted the overall impact of COVID-19 on the nation’s mental health, particularly among workers from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.
For more information, contact Katherine McGuire and Andrew Strickland.