Have you noticed a change in your employees’ mental health while working from home?
Taking care of your employees’ mental health is crucial. It’s just as important as reaching project goals and maintaining productivity.
Remote working can be challenging for your teams’ mental health. It can turn your top performers and productive workers into tired and unmotivated employees.
Here’s the List of 15 Ways to Support Remote Workers’ Mental Health
- Conduct mental health training and sessions
- Use technology to stay connected with teams
- Conduct team-building activities daily
- Ask them to take regular breaks
- Check-in with them regularly
- Help them upgrade their home office
- Encourage physical fitness
- Help them decide their working hours
- Appreciate and reward good work
- Lead by example
- Offer emotional support (as a manager)
- Keep your team in the loop
- Create a sense of community and belonging
- Send surveys to know their mental health
- Share helpful resources
Wondering what are the most common challenges remote workers face?
3 Common Challenges Remote Workers Face
Isolation and Loneliness
Employees may feel isolated when their home suddenly becomes their office.
They miss their coworkers. They miss chit-chatting while having coffee or lunch together. They miss celebrating together.
This camaraderie doesn’t translate over Slack.
And they can feel lonely and isolated.
According to a Buffer Survey, 19% of remote employees report loneliness as their biggest challenge.
Anxiety and Stress
The boundary between work and home life blurs for people who work in the same place they sleep. They can feel pressure and stress.
People have to manage their time, to-do, house chores, family, and projects. They may feel anxious to ‘be on’ when they should be off.
Depression
Anxiety, stress, loneliness, and isolation can lead to depression. People feel stuck and it causes a loss of productivity.
They feel frustration, irritation, loss of interest, sleep disturbance, tiredness, restlessness, trouble concentrating, and physical problems.
The good news?
You can take care of your teams’ mental health and they don’t need to suffer. In this article, you’ll find 15 amazing ways to support your remote workers’ mental health.
How to Support 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.
At Springworks, we regularly conduct mental well-being sessions where we ask experts to come and talk to our employees.
Quick Fact: 50% of all corporate employees in India suffer from stress and depression, according to the ASSOCHAM 2015 report.
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.
Use tools such as Donut, Icebreakers, and Let’s Roam to let your employees know each other and form a strong team bonding.
Does someone have a birthday? Use Tools such as HouseParty or Zoom to create a virtual video room so everyone can sing “Happy birthday!” when they join. Share sweet birthday greetings and wishes to make the person feel extra special.
Quick Fact: 87% of Slack users that say it improves their communication and collaboration inside their organization. (Source)
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.
Check out our recent fun video series:
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.
Use tools such as Trivia, which virtually allows remote teams within a Slack workspace to play 1000s of quizzes right inside Slack! These activities will bring social and fun to your workspace.
Quick Fact: More than half of remote employees say they feel disconnected from in-office employees. (Source)
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.
Tools such as Brain.fm, Calm, and Headspace will help them to reduce their stress level and boost their mood.
Quick Fact: 37% of remote workers stay productive by taking breaks. (Source)
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.
Quick Fact: 20% of remote workers identify communication as an obstacle.
6. Help them upgrade their home office
There is a strong correlation between your workspace and environment around you, and your ability to be productive and happy when working.
Poorly designed workspaces can make us hostile, less collaborative, and we do not function and learn.
The workspace should be pleasing and functional. It needs to work and make you psychologically comfortable.
How can you help your remote team to set up a beautiful workspace?
At Springworks, we offer amazing perks to our employees to buy amazing furniture, standing desks, headphones, and the Internet. And we get lots of responses from our employees about how they’ve been managing, how they’ve upgraded their home office, things they’re doing to keep productive.
Quick Fact: 65% of employees say a better work environment improves their performance.
7. Encourage physical fitness
Studies show that physical exercise boosts mood, relieves anxiety, and improves sleep.
In fact, a recent study done by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that running for 15 minutes a day or walking for an hour reduces the risk of major depression by 26%.
Encourage your people to do some exercise, walking, stretching, and Yoga daily. You can offer a wellness stipend, which can be used for anything from yoga classes to gym equipment. You can also gift fitness trackers to remote employees.
At Springworks, we have “Walking Challenge” – we reward the employee with the highest number of step count with a gift card.
Here’s the announcement of this challenge from our CEO:
Quick Fact: Only 42% of employers offer a wellness program. (Source)
8. Help them decide their working hours
People may have to balance their family or housework with their work. Allow them flexible work hours (let them decide their working hours).
It will establish the boundary between work life and home life. You must encourage your team to develop healthy boundaries between home and office.
Ask them to update their start and end hours in the company’s messaging platform (Slack or MS Teams) so their colleagues can see their availability.
See how I update my working hours in Slack.
Quick Fact: 90 percent of employees say that flexibility in their work arrangements contributes to their morale. (Source)
9. Appreciate and reward good work
When remote employees don’t get feedback, they could feel confused, disconnected, and lose motivation. You must appreciate their good work.
It’s all about telling them that you notice and appreciate their efforts and work. It could be a simple thank you note or a simple message on the company’s messaging platform or a shout out in an email.
You can also give them gift cards or monetary bonuses as rewards.
At Springworks, we encourage peer-to-peer recognition and bonuses. Recently I got a special Amazon gift voucher for completing a task:
Quick Fact: When asked what leaders could do to improve engagement, 58% of professionals endorsed giving recognition.
10. Lead by example
You can take charge of breaking the stigma of mental ill-health in the workplace. You can share with your team how you take care of your mental health.
By being open and transparent, your team will feel comfortable enough to let you know their experience. It requires some bravery from people at the top to step forward and talk about their mental issues.
When Deloitte UK launched the “This Is Me” campaign, six of their most senior people stepped forward and spoke about their own issues with mental health.
Quick Fact: 86% of companies say more employees talk openly about mental health in their workplace as a result of their This is Me activities.
11. Offer emotional support (as a manager)
Probably, you’ve heard this saying, “Leave your emotions at the door.” But today, things are different. A true leader understands that their emotional support can inspire people to achieve.
As a leader, make sure you demonstrate empathy with your employees. Be understanding and avoid going overboard due to minor difficulties.
Showing emotional support can go a long way in helping employees bring out the best and work in a stress-free environment.
Quick Fact: Research shows that organizations whose workers feel safe and comfortable enough to express their feelings are more productive and creative.
12. Keep your team in the loop
To minimize uncertainty, keep your team up to date with what is going on at an organization level during group meetings, and send official updates around any specific company news (especially news that affects them) so employees have it for reference.
Providing clarity and direction can help teams focus and feel supported when adjusting to a new way of working. Discuss with your teams how you’d like to run supervision, check-ins, and manage sign-offs remotely.
Quick Fact: Remote employees are 16% less likely to agree that their manager involves them in the goal-setting process. (Source)
13. Create a sense of community and belonging
Employee wellbeing and mental health should align with your company culture. If openness, a people focus, and empathy are part of your values, these should be emulated in the way you support your workforce and be reinforced during uncertain times.
Use your communications platforms as touchpoints to create a sense of community – encouraging people to share self-care strategies, creating competitions, and introducing thoughtful topics will inject a sense of fun into your approach, all the while facilitating employee engagement and fostering kindness.
Quick Fact: 80% of remote workers would consider quitting their current position for a job that focused more on employees’ mental health. (Source)
14. Send surveys to know their mental health
Sometimes people don’t feel comfortable discussing mental health or personal struggles. They don’t want to bother their manager or CEO with personal problems.
You can check on their mental health by sending remote employee pulse surveys every month. Consider asking these types of questions:
- Do you think your workload has increased or decreased since we went to mandatory WFH? (On a scale 1-10)
- How do you deal with stress or anxiety?
- Do you feel comfortable discussing your mental health with your manager? If not, why not?
These pulse surveys can help you to read your employees’ mental health and take preventive measures.
Quick Fact: 80% average completion rate for surveys shorter than 7 minutes. (Source)
15. Share helpful resources
To support the mental health of remote workers, share helpful resources with your employees. You can send it out monthly in a company-wide email and post it on your blog.
Review and update the remote work resource list to make sure all the stuff is up-to-date. At Springworks, we get amazing resources in our inbox.
Upwork’s “Future Workforce Report” predicts that 73% of all teams will have remote workers by 2028.
FAQs
Working from home has created new mental health challenges for employees. Here are some challenges a remote worker can face:
– Depression and anxiety.
– Not finding work-life balance.
– Poor healthy habits.
– Working too much.
– Poor time management.
Learn more about remote work challenges.
In this guide, you’ll find 15 ways to promote and maintain the mental well-being of your remote employees.
Team building games and activities are great ways to connect your teams socially. In this guide, you’ll find some engaging team-building exercises and games.
You can better support your remote employees’ physical health by working directly with employees, their managers, and HR to address them. Read this guide to learn more about it.
As an employer, it’s up to you to support every employee’s mental well-being. A healthy, happy employee boosts efficiency and attracts potential talents that your company is a great place to work.
Want to bring your teams together? Trivia is the new way to connect with your remote team while playing exciting quizzes on Slack and Microsoft Teams. Get your Free Trial Now!
Originally published July 17, 2020 11:58 AM, last updated May 21 2021
