The impact of the daily life of a remote employee shall affect their mental well-being. When an employee finds themselves in a situation where work and personal lives blend, there is a blurring of mental boundaries which leads to an accumulation of mental stress that has become such an issue over time.
Establishing breaks during the workday helps maintain and balance the productivity of an employee.
Another method of reducing an employee’s cognitive overload is through task reduction. The application of these different methods, can help create a more supportive relationship between co-workers.
Since they will blend their working hours, with their personal time, placing clear boundaries around when a remote employee has to work, and when he/she does not have to work is very important in keeping both the employee, and their workplace, healthy and engaged.
Establishing Breaks During the Workday
Employees are too often put into a position of having to make a choice of how to approach the situation of whether to log off whenever, or to be considered unproductive. Being under this kind of pressure creates adverse effects on the sleep and personal relationships of the employee.
Companies that create a culture of trust by allowing for the establishment of boundaries, are able to create better employee engagement and improve the mental health of their employees.
Revolutionising Availability
When there is a defined time period where employees need to respond to inquiries, it takes away the anxiety of being expected to respond to requests outside of the defined business hours.
Employees are less anxious about what is expected of them when there is a defined expectation of when they are to respond to requests.
Microsoft is an example of a company that has established a culture around respecting time zones and gives employees the opportunity of having offline hours.
This honouring of a person’s off-hours has led to less guilt for being away from work during non-business hours. Encouraging workers to truly detach from their jobs.
Management’s Role in Supporting Employee Mental Health
Management’s interaction with their workforce is a critical component to an employee’s mental health. The degree to which management is supportive of employees’ complaints about stress will drive how comfortable employees are with sharing their stress concerns with their management teams.
Supportive managers create a workplace that is safe for employees to express their emotions. When managers demonstrate support for employees, they foster a feeling of connection among employees as well as a significant amount of trust between management and employees.
Therefore, when management displays empathy towards their employees, employees feel valued and seen.
When Managers Listen to Their Employees
When managers listen to their employees without judgement of what an employee is feeling or experiencing, they can create an employment environment safe for an employee to communicate candidly.
As per the World Health Organization‘s findings, empathy is a fundamental factor in supporting the Mental Health of staff members.
In creating an environment of empathy, management encourages employees to engage in conversations earlier with their manager, thereby providing for more timely and appropriate care for mental health concerns.
To be well, remote employees should feel they have social connections to their workplace
Having virtual social connections enables employees to fill the social connection void that remote offices create.
Virtual social spaces allow employees to have informal interaction, an opportunity for periodic check-in and bonding over shared interests.
When employees have a social connection with their coworkers, this will help them be able to maintain a productive balance between work and have the necessary preparation to work collaboratively again in the future.
Using Technology to Support and Sustain Mental Health
The impact technology has on the mental health of remote employees is that unmet needs could create a negative impact on the mental health of employees.
Properly managed digital technology can help ease stress and improve focus; however, if poorly managed, digital technology could create an increase in the amount of stress employees feel and contribute to employee burnout.
In order to provide proper balance in the workplace, the well-being of employees must be maintained.
Many remote workers use multiple channels to communicate and collaborate with each other, and the greater the number of channels, the greater the likelihood of confusion and cognitive overload for employees.
A well- structured and organised digital workflow allows employees to take control and therefore reduces the amount of cognition required to work remotely.
Wellness Apps
Consequently, when employees have easy access to such applications, they are more likely to use them regularly and thus positively contribute to the mental well-being of employees.
Reducing The Amount Of Digital Communication That Is Not Necessary
Examples of how digital communication can be used in remote work to support a productive environment include the use of the tool Slack, which has defined “message boundaries” to create a healthy digital communication experience.
Balancing Employee Wellness And Productivity
The mental health of remote employees will have a direct impact on their productivity.
Many remote employees are often under pressure to prove their value.
Measuring Employee Results, Not Time
Companies such as Deloitte are beginning to adopt and promote the same results-driven approach to performance, as outlined above.
Recognizing Employee Progress
Providing enhanced training for managers on how to help their employees with mental well being is essential for remote teams’ success and employee mental wellness.
Training managers to determine how to create a positive working environment for employees allows managers to provide assistance to employees during times of distress.
As employees do not have a physical presence in a remote environment, managers have less ability to interpret employee’s emotional cues.
Research indicates that the ability to interpret emotional cues or stress levels is extremely valuable in managing remote employees.
Therefore, providing training to managers on identifying mental health distress in employees increases the likelihood of manager support for employees.
Additional development of manager’s skills related to mental health.
Training for managers should include the most common signs and symptoms of burnout and anxiety, as well as the skills using effective listening techniques to demonstrate empathy with employees.
Several of the World Health Organization‘s initiatives have focused on training managers to support the mental well being of their employees.
Flexible Work Schedule Practices
The creation of flexible policies for all employees will also provide some level of relief for the stress related to working at home.
Flexibility allows employees to choose how and when to do their jobs, which ultimately provides them and their managers with a more comfortable working environment; because it allows employees to have control of their job situation, it creates a better mental environment for employees.
Employees can enjoy a flexible work schedule where they choose how and when to work based on their individual energy levels and focus on the job; the result is emotional balance of workers and the increasing the engagement of workers with their jobs.
Flexible work schedules allow workers to choose the hours of work and maintain independence to do so.
For example, a number of companies like Spotify approach the schedule of their remote workers with flexibility; in doing this, it builds a level of trust and reduces stress on remote workers caused by overwork.
Flexible Location and Load Adjustment
The availability of remote workers to work from their desired location will also reduce an employee’s working environment pressure.
Reducing workload in periods of high stress may cause complete removal of that stress.
When an organisation provides flexibility in these two areas, it can create a foundation for the long-term protection of an employee’s mental health and support employees to produce a higher volume of work over time.
Together, both of these elements create the basis for the continued success of remote workers.
Measuring Workplace Wellbeing to Enable Continuous Improvement for Employee Wellness
The ongoing measuring of workplace well-being supports organisations to provide for their employee wellness; therefore, through the evaluation of workplace well-being employers are able to understand and know what each worker’s specific needs are.
Information obtained from responses to workplace stressors and feedback from workers will be a key driver of the mental well-being of employees.
With a solid data-driven understanding of the mental well-being of workers, employers can make better-informed decisions and implement a continuous improvement process on the mental well-being program of employees.
Using Survey And Feedback Tools
Pulse Surveys Provide Organizations With Current Level Of Well Being Data, For Example, Gallup Points To Well Being As Statistical Indicators Of Performance.
When There Is Reliable Data Available Decision Makers Have The Ability To Make Accurate Adjustments To Existing Policies And Guidelines Or Develop New Guidelines Based On Good Information.
The Act Of Measuring Provides Organizations The Opportunity To Implement Value-Added Initiatives That Increase Organizational Quality Of Life.
Responding To Well Being Data Reports
Collecting Data In And Of Itself Does Not Provide Distinct Benefits To Organizations.
Once Data Have Been Collected, Organizations Need To Be Actively And Visibly Engaged In Response To Feedback Received.
Publishing Actions Taken Establishes An Organization’s Credibility And Establishes Organizational Trust In The Marketplace.
Identifying the Early Signs of Burnout
After some time, the employee’s mental health can deteriorate from this way of thinking.
But, if proactive measures are taken at an early stage to decrease employee burnout, the employee and their team will become much more effective, productive and continue to be mentally healthy.
The American Psychological Association has stated that identifying the early signs of employee burnout is one of the most effective strategies for helping employees avoid burnout by providing assistance and treatment as soon as possible.
Supporting Employee Recovery Through Rest
Providing opportunities for employees to recover mentally will help them to perform better.
In addition to offering periodic breaks, mental health days and developing reasonable workloads, employee recovery strategies can produce more productive employees and maintain their mental health over the long-term, therefore enabling a healthy team to perform better and longer than a non-healthy team.
Developing an Environment of Transparent Communication
Employers and employees alike want to have a workplace that supports the mental well-being of all employees.
Employers need to be able to demonstrate their commitment to supporting mental wellness by what they do through actions.
Mental wellness as part of the company’s overall corporate value system
An emphasis on mental wellness as part of the company’s overall corporate value system will help create a more sustained supportive environment for mental wellness over time.
In order to achieve the alignment of policies to wellness values, a company must have flexibility in the workplace, provide appropriate resources to help employees maintain their mental wellness and set a proper level of expectations.
Unilever has embedded mental wellness as part of their corporate culture and therefore has developed a higher level of trust with its employees.
Leadership Behaviour and Workplace Culture
The behaviours of leaders model the values of the company.
Leaders enhance the overall cultural framework of the work environment more than by the words they use.
Consistency of behaviours by the leaders of a company enhance employee morale and employee engagement and result in the development of a company culture based on values which will support the work/life balance of the employees.
Ensuring mental wellness becomes an ongoing commitment
Ensuring mental wellness becomes an ongoing commitment to support the mental wellness of all employees in the workforce.
As remote work continues to expand, changes will be made within the structure of remote workers.
The issue with these changes is that they provide uncertainty and create stress for remote workers unless there is a plan to establish adequate support systems for remote employees.
Companies that make ongoing investments in providing training and resources and that develop leaders in mental wellness who role model mental wellness will create a more secure workforce.
