Remote working can be challenging for your teams’ mental health. It can turn your top performers and productive workers into tired and unmotivated employees.
In this article, you’ll find 5 amazing ideas to support your remote workers’ mental health.
1. Conduct mental health training and sessions
As a company, you have to start taking your employees’ mental health as seriously as physical health. If people suffer from anxiety, they can’t give their best performance and need some time to recover.
How can you promote mental well-being at your company?
Start providing mental health training and sessions virtually. Corporate mental health training should cover more practical topics that focus on preventing stress and burnout. You can onboard experts to take mental health information sessions.
The goal of mental health training should be to open conversations about mental health and equip people with tools to create a safe, engaged, and productive workplace.
2. Use technology to stay connected with teams
It’s important to stay connected with your team in a remote working world. As we discussed above, people can struggle with loneliness when working from home.
Tools and technologies are here to help.
To stay connected, it is important your employees have the tools designated for a specific communication need. For instance, there is Slack for instant messages and Zoom for virtual meetings.
Encourage employees to communicate and be open not just for work-related reasons, but for socializing, too. While they can’t pop over to a colleague’s desk to ask a question or chat, technology can help them feel less isolated.
3. Conduct team-building activities daily
Encourage your remote employees to connect socially. Create a fun channel on your company’s messaging platform (Such as Slack or MS Teams) to have water-cooler and fun conversations only.
At Springworks, we have a #random channel on Slack, where we do fun and random conversations, including:
- Cooking or baking.
- TV shows and movies.
- Sports and fun activities.
- Sharing workspace photos.
- Sharing childhood pics.
Or host a virtual lunch hour where everyone can log in and savor their meals together. It’s a good way to make them feel they’re not alone.
You can also play virtual games and quizzes daily. These activities are quick and make your employees feel relaxed.
4. Ask them to take regular breaks
A healthy schedule includes breaks. Most of us are unaccustomed to looking at a screen for eight hours straight. Remote employees may feel guilty if they log out when there’s still work to be done or if they take a break.
This inability to unplug can negatively affect the mental health of remote workers. They may burn themselves out.
Help your employees to achieve work/life balance by encouraging them to take regular breaks to stretch, walk around, or get a healthy snack.
5. Check-in with them regularly
When employees have less communication with their teammates, it can make them feel worried about their performance, confused and disconnected. Managers should check-in with their team to keep everyone in the loop.
See how everyone is doing. Schedule a team check-in at the start of every new week. Ask their experiences on how life is at home and what’s keeping everyone busy once work is done for the day.
Encourage small-talk and personal conversations during work meetings. It’s a great way to know your employees’ personalities.
Article originally published at Springworks Blog