As the Corona virus spreads its fangs globally, more and more people are thrown into a new reality of Working From Home (WFH) or if you are a student Studying From Home (SFH). Given our experience with remote work I’ve put together some suggestions to make sure you stay healthy both physically and mentally while WFH. I’m including a free bonus at the end if you care about your team!
Look, working remote can be a wonderful and rewarding experience; it’s something we’ve been doing at Okaya from the start and all my teams have been distributed for the past 20 years.
But let’s be honest, working from home is not for everyone and this time around the circumstances are different. This time is actually very fertile for people to have bad WFH experiences that can then impact your business, teams, and personal lives.
Isolation sucks.
Look at the situation in Italy where most businesses are shutdown; this means people have very little reason/incentives to leave home. Ever heard of being “cooped-up” or have you read “huis-clos” from Sartre? That’s the situation we are going to have to deal with.
You may not be alone in your home/dorm.
It does not seem like much but when there is more than one person at home then productivity will be impacted. You may also have to plan before going on a call to limit bandwidth usage. And of course if you have a kid then it gets even harder!
Get dressed.
So the jokes on social media about working pant-less are fun but getting dressed has one benefit and it’s that you mentally switch from one activity to another. I’m not saying wear a 3-piece suit, especially if you are working by the beach; simply train your mind for the switch!
Have a dedicated office area.
This is where it gets harder for most of us because space is often at a premium where we live. Yet being able to have a dedicated work area can do wonders so that you can mentally switch between the work zone and “home”
Hangout with friends.
Again, isolation is the worst situation you can put yourself in. Spend time on the phone or meet in person in a low-risk setting
Social media is evil.
A research published in published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology shows that people lowered their symptoms of depression and loneliness when limiting their social media interactions to 10 minutes a day. Including for work related reason. WFH will give you lots of extra time, use it to grow, not to hurt yourself.
Workout.
I know the options may be tough, but you should find some ways to exercise both mentally and physically. If you set a schedule, then you can pretend that your commute time is now your workout time.
Stay off the fridge.
And the pantry. Trust me on this one. It’s tempting, it’s right there!
The hardest thing will be to manage how you keep your team healthy and sharp in this new reality. And this is where the free help comes in.
We want to help, for free, and make a difference. Okaya can simplify how you stay in touch with your team to make sure they are doing well mentally -and physically, especially should they become isolated during shutdowns.
How we will help:
- After setting up your account (which takes less than 5 minutes) you can deploy Okaya with your “end-users”
- We will help them track their wellbeing levels. All they have to do is take a 15 second video selfie
- Based on how much information they decide to share, we can either alert you of individual issues or give you overall trends.
- If you want, we can also put them in touch with our existing network of wellbeing experts or, if you have your own, we can facilitate how information is shared between groups.
We’re here to help prevent depression and burnout and this is the right time to act.
Want to try it?