Portable Sanitation Association International

ASSOCIATIONINSIGHT Portable Sanitation Association International News BIWEEKLY EDITION SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 Page 6 Fostering Mental Health in Your Company…Continued from page 5 Continued on page 7 As you can see, employees value mental health. In addition, they value companies that acknowledge and provide for this very real need. PSAI Member Companies Perspectives on Employee Mental Health Three PSAI member companies volunteered to share their thoughts, ideas, and practices in creating and maintaining a mental health culture that meets their employees' needs: • FusionSite Services, based in Nashville, Tennessee—Valerie Leonard, Head of Human Resources • Pit Stop Sanitation of Atlanta, Georgia—Amanda Roques, Vice President, Business Development • Andy Gump Company of Santa Clarita, California—Nancy Gump, Owner Before I tell you what these wonderful volunteers shared about their experiences, below is the general outline of questions that formed the basis of the interviews. You may want to answer these questions for your company and then read our interviewees' responses. General Discussion Outline Questions: • What are some of the COVID-19 safety policies and procedures that you have implemented to make the employees feel more comfortable? • Have you had/are you having employees work from home? How is that going? • How are you handling cases where a parent (your employee) must spend time at home to help with home schooling? • Have you had any employees with COVID? Have any employees taken time off because they were possibly exposed to someone with COVID? • Any cases of employees needing to take time off for a "mental health day" or to check on a loved one? Do these days count against personal days and vacation days or is this considered "above and beyond?" • Has anyone requested time off for counseling appointments? How is this handled? • Are you dealing with any special circumstances as a result of COVID? • How do these "COVID-related issues" affect your business? Routes? Deliveries/Pickups? Emergencies? Staying in contact with employees who have been working from home for prolonged periods? • The effects of the pandemic will last beyond the time that it begins to fade away. Will some of these policies and procedures continue for the foreseeable future? • What are you doing to motivate employees? How do you instill some fun into these stressful times? How did you do in answering these questions? Did you come up with any ideas that you may want to implement in your company? Now for our fellow members' thoughts and ideas… Valerie Leonard—FusionSite Services Valerie is a certified human resources professional whose skills encompass employment practices, employee relations, benefits, safety, and organizational development. With more than 17 years of prior experience with Nissan Motor Corporation, she has the expertise to deal with employee mental health during this long and uncertain period of COVID-19. She joined FusionSite Services in April of this year, just as COVID-19 was taking off.

• Cover