This year has been a difficult year for many in the workplace. Since so many companies are currently working from home or have limited staff in the office, it is important to be creative in how you take inventory of the wellness of your staff. While working from home is often a positive perk for employees, the abrupt shift to solitary workspaces can lead to many employees feeling disconnected. Here are a couple of steps you can take to keep your employees engaged and interested at home.
For many going to work and seeing other team members is fun and social time for them. Offer your employees a virtual lunch hour to keep everyone in contact with one another. This can be done by setting up a zoom room for anyone to join the company. This gives an employee the ability to check in with each other and stay in contact with people they may not interact with during the workday.
Working from home can at times be more stressful than working in the office. Everything happened so quickly for many companies, so many employees felt unprepared to work from home so quickly. You have all the essentials in the office to get the job done, working at home you may not have everything needed to get your job done. Sometimes it is easier to get a task done at work versus at home. Check-in to make sure everyone has a dedicated workspace at home and have all the tools necessary to get the job done.
While working from home, employees are losing the beginning and end of a workday, making the day feel stationary and drag by without a change of scenery. Encourage your employees to go grab a cup of coffee at a local shop or keep up with their normal before and after work routine. Make sure they take a couple of breaks during the workday instead of just powering through the day. While in the office you do sometimes get distracted or have a morning coffee break with a couple of coworkers. Make sure they take 15 minutes every few hours to get away from their work and do something fun. This will help bring back some normalization to their workday.
Start a fun challenge with everyone in the office. See who can walk the most steps in a month or week, which every best suits your office. This will help keep employees active while they work from home. Staying active is a great way to relieve any stress an employee may be going through at the moment.
If your company has a wellness program in place, now is the perfect time to be using it. If your company does not have a wellness program, now is the perfect time to start one. Every program is customizable to the company and what is important at that point in time.
