Your Mental Health: The Hidden Costs of Working from Home | Part 4 of 5

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“There is no health without mental health.”

-Center for Workplace Mental Health, Canada

When I worked in an office all day, I would come home and want to stay home. When I started working from home, by Friday I needed to escape the house. I learned to create room in my schedule for networking with colleagues and to enjoy my lunch outside on the balcony. Little things!

Six months into the workplace shutdown caused by the pandemic, many people were able to create a new schedule working from home. Now August brings the new school year and the chaos of children returning to school, or not, threatens to upend any calm that may have been found.

In the first four parts of this series, I talked about the opportunity to adjust how you provide online training and data security in the virtual office, and being mindful to protect your career aspirations and your physical health.

Disruption, while uncomfortable and sometimes tragic, can provide opportunities to create change. For your nonprofit, it could be the moment where you can mirror your mission through the better treatment of your employees.

In this post, I’d like to suggest how you might use social connection and proactive communication to protect your mental health and that of your employees – and even your family members! But mostly I want to give you lots of resources.

Create Social Connections

“Keep in mind that social distancing does not mean social isolation.”

-Center for Workplace Mental Health, U.S.

If you were working in an environment where you interacted routinely, if not daily, with your team members and others, socially and professionally, working from home doesn’t mean you have to stop being social. But it often means you have to be deliberate and creative about how to have social connections.

From networking to connecting with your team, the alternatives to face-to-face meetings sometimes requires a bit of extra structure to engage people, especially when it is all new. It’s not enough to have everyone on video on Zoom for a happy hour. There needs to be a game or a more formal sharing of something specific and tagging the next person.

For example, I attended a Happy Hour with my association chapter and our host customized a “Family Feud” style game using information from a popular industry report. We divided into teams and competed. It was really fun, brought up some good conversation, helped us to get to know each other, and yet was relevant to our work.

Being social online requires adapting the tried and true activities and games for the online world and for you. Likewise, it means accommodating the communication styles of others. If you’re not sure, test things out. It’s okay if it isn’t a glorious success first time. Just try again.

If people are awkward on video, use online meetings to share a game screen and let people participate via audio. If your group is large, create activities that leverage the chat or breakout rooms. If you have people who love video, create activities that emphasize the visual, such as using props.

Can’t figure it out yourself? Hire a creative concierge like Jackie Botelho! My alma mater, Neumann University, had Jackie create an online alumni networking experience. It was the first time I could ever participate in such an event from Florida. She guided us through introductions, breakouts to discuss a question, and encouraged us all to share connection information, such as LinkedIn. I connected with more people than I usually do at a live networking event!

The U.S. Center for Disease Control has a great recommendation: “Try to keep up with regular routines. If schools are closed, create a schedule for learning activities and relaxing or fun activities.” Just realize that while it sounds simple, it’s not always easy to implement and you might need to be persistent to find a schedule and activities that work for your group – whether that is your children, family, or co-workers.

Don’t Wait! Now is the Time to be Pro-Active

“In these stressful times, it is not enough to post benefit information on your company website.”

-National Safety Council

If your organization does not address mental health currently, this could be the best time to have the discussion. With most people experiencing some kind of stress, people are less likely to feel stigmatized by having a problem.

Right now, we are being faced with such a variety of stressful challenges: sudden routine changes, a barrage of new software to learn, children at home, isolation from family and friends, racism and resulting unrest, and so many more.

What elevates your stress levels might reduce someone else’s. High stress levels, especially over an extended period of time, can have profoundly negative effects on physical and mental health – which of course is going to affect work performance.

As a manager, you can proactively and frequently communicate the mental health and other services available for your employees. Even if you don’t have formal benefits like this, you can help your team create a collection of resources available. I’ve given you a head-start on that in the additional resources below.

When you ask “how are you doing?” be sure to listen carefully to the response. If you ask the question routinely you are more likely to notice changes over time. Managers and co-workers are not therapists, but proactively communicating how to access help, asking, and listening can make a difference.

There really is no health without mental health. You work for a nonprofit on a mission. Proactive communication and staying socially connected are just two ways you can help fulfill your nonprofit’s mission by taking care of your employees.

Additional Resources

2 thoughts on “Your Mental Health: The Hidden Costs of Working from Home | Part 4 of 5”

  1. This is a powerfully important topic. And, when we go to return to on-site work after lock-down, we experience the phenomenon of “Re-entry Anxiety.” I recently returned to my private office on a college campus. This was before faculty and students returned for in-person and hybrid instruction, so the place was like a ghost town. I felt safe in my office. However, as faculty, staff, and students began returning from states like New York, New Jersey, and Florida, anxiety spiked daily. Plus, the much maligned “other duties and responsibilities as assigned” clause in our job descriptions now mean donning PPE and taking temperature of hundreds of students waiting to enter a dining hall. For some, the fear experienced during this will be crippling.
    “Re-entry anxiety” is a real thing. Read about it at the following link, along with 10 tips to manage your personal transition: https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/10-tips-manage-re-entry-anxiety-related-covid-19.
    This is but one such resource, but you can do an Internet search and find more. Time Magazine, for example, treated the topic in June 2020 at https://time.com/5850143/covid-19-re-entry-anxiety/.
    So, to all I say, may you be well! May you be calm! May you have peace!

    1. Wow! This is not something that was on my radar, Stephen. Thank you so much for sharing your story, raising the issue, and providing resources (which I will happily add to the list).

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