Summer has ended, or perhaps, never really began as the traditional break in the work/school year for so many of us. What would be normally be an opportunity to recharge the batteries, turn off the phone, send the kids off somewhere, or enjoy the gentle cascade of out of office emails became something else. It was a harried experience, more an air pocket of socialization in this never ending COVID-19 cave system than a genuine reprieve. Now autumn is here, and already its portents of doom are enough to merit its own horror franchise. People are inundated with images and stories about ecological and societal collapse, much of which is purposely presented to maximize its negative psychological impact. This is a key comorbidity in the contemporary mental state of any individual you interact with.Employers: keep this state of affairs in mind when dealing with your staff. Our normal work year is based on the presumption that we have all had a restful summer. Those who did manage to disconnect, still can't avoid the ever present tension of our current existence, which will quickly subsume those gains. Even normally innocuous discussions about how people spent the summer can exacerbate underlying tensions being felt between those whose family, economic, or social dynamic allowed for a reprieve versus those who did not, or magnify already present related inequalities.In fact, the change that many of your colleagues have undergone, visible or not, will be one of the defining and most difficult things your organization may have to deal with in the coming months and years. Consider this example, if you will: the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Parallels.[1]” In this episode, Lieutenant Worf is returning to the Enterprise when his shuttlecraft encounters an anomaly and begins shifting him through different dimensions, each minutely different than the last. The episode culminates with thousands of Enterprises suddenly appearing as they attempt to reunite Worf with his correct ship before the same anomaly destroys them all.One day we left our offices and got impacted by this anomaly called COVID, forever altering our experiences going forward. Some of us experienced minor changes, like Wesley Crusher getting a new shirt, while others became Pandemic beard Riker screaming from an exploding bridge. In a similar way, this pandemic has fundamentally impacted the perspective, circumstance, priorities, and/or professional expectations of millions of Canadians.These changes are not confined to those that unfortunately lost their jobs, or had their hours reduced (or radically increased), but also apply to those who have maintained relatively consistent employment throughout. Within the workplace employee experiences have drastically varied, with some having been tasked with an ever increasing series of responsibilities, while others were untasked as mandates and resources got shifted to respond to COVID-19. This has created an experiential division between those who had been given work and those who had not.For many of us, our sense of identity is tied to our profession, and more specifically, to our capacity to succeed in it and be recognized as such. When places of employment change an employee's role, even when understandably responding to crisis, they can create stress and self-doubt. No longer are the agreed upon paths for advancement there, the mentorship opportunities or roll outs of long awaited plans individuals may have been working on. Any strategic planning being undertaken about new HR priorities should involve a review of the where pre-COVID activities were at and not have them disregarded as irrelevant in light of our current environment. Managers and people-leaders are going to have look as much backward about what and who was left behind as they are going to look forward to see what they need to do to further prepare and support their employees.Rob Rosenfeld is the Vice President, National Capital Region and Corporate Communications for Morneau Shepell, the largest provider of mental health and employee wellbeing services in Canada. He has previously worked as both a civil servant and a political staffer, as well as for the not-for-profit, and post-secondary sector. While his expressed opinions are his own, his employer shares his passion for advocating for greater mental health support and services for all Canadians.