It’s widely recognised that the biggest impact of the transition to remote work has been on mental health – exacerbated by the uncertainty, confusion and fear that covid19 has caused.  Safeguarding the mental health of your remote employees is vital in keeping them happy, engaged and motivated:

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Staying connected with remote employees on a day to day basis is obviously important, but the nature of the communication is important too – it’s not enough that you’re constantly in touch with your employees through regular emails and slack conversations, you need to hear and see each other to better connect in a meaningful way and also to be able to check-in with each other.  Make sure you’re using technology to empower and facilitate connections so that it acts as a conduit and a connector and isn’t just enslaving your staff with constant alerts and to-dos.

Keep it fun

In-office workers get a massive mental health boost from the seemingly inconsequential conversations at the water cooler or on the walk to the coffee shop; this need for connectivity is what makes us human.  Remote workers can spend much of their day on zoom calls or in slack conversations but the focus with these styles of communication is very much task-oriented.  Use your technologies – and your organizing prowess – to create opportunities for less formal/work-focused communications; whether that’s an always-open zoom call that people can pop in and out of, or a Friday afternoon video Pictionary game.

Get your teams trained as mental first aiders

Every business should have a mental health first aider who has been trained in how to identify potential issues and how to handle them.  Increasingly, mental health first aider courses are being adapted to identifying mental health concerns in remote workers.

Encourage regular breaks

There are a number of technology solutions that can assist with this – automatically prompting remote employees to break after specific hours on a project, for example.  Some of the time tracking apps also offer alerts and nudges to take breaks.

Encourage and demonstrate work life balance

If your remote employees are working flexible hours, there’s a much greater chance that they’ve lost the ability to differentiate between work and home; working hours and non-working hours. When you work at home, you’re at home at work, too. In time, this can lead to burnout and mental health issues. Consider using productivity apps or time tracking apps to keep an eye on the hours your employees are clocking up.  Or use technology that clearly shows when employees are “on” and when they’ve unofficially clocked-off and monitor for emails or other comms being sent outside of these times which indicate an employee hasn’t actually switched off.

Incentivise fit, healthy lifestyles

Fitness and physical activity are so beneficial – not just for physical health but for mental health too.  Engaging in incentives and reimbursement schemes which focus on fitness can be an attractive employee benefit whilst also benefitting your employees and their productivity levels, it’s a win-win.

Get together

Whether you have a fully distributed workforce or a combination of remote workers and in-office, it’s important to use real-life interactions to supplement the virtual.  How this looks will depend entirely on your scale, geography and of course budget – it might be that you have a series of meet-ups that brings workers on the same continent together, if it’s not practical to bring everyone together to one place.  It doesn’t have to be whole of company, but bringing people together is incredibly powerful and will strengthen their daily working relationships too.