By Leo Bierman, MS, LaC​

The importance of mental and physical health has never been more obvious as people everywhere struggle to endure the COVID-19 pandemic. During this difficult time, you can have an enormous positive impact on the lives of your employees by supporting their health and wellbeing. Taking the steps suggested below accomplishes this goal while creating a healthy culture and a thriving business.

Remember that as a manager or leader, you set the tone for your employees. The structures and expectations you create can make the difference between your team feeling stressed and burnt out or supported and healthy. Among the recommendations that follow, keep these two principles in mind:

• • Be a model for what health and a good work-life balance look like. Your example establishes the culture. Your team will have an easier time taking care of themselves while feeling they have permission to do so if you show them by your actions that it’s okay.
  • Create formal structures and explicit expectations to support your team’s health. Providing only loose guidelines or suggestions for self-care often doesn’t cut it. To truly support your team, take steps to build health into the workday and the culture.

Here are the top five ways you can create a company culture that emphasizes health and wellbeing:

1.  Lead with empathy

Start by asking your employees what they need.

We are living in unique times, and the needs of your employees may be different and even greater than usual. Find out what they are. Consider sending out an anonymous survey or email with open-ended questions to learn more about what they are dealing with and what support they need.

Keep the conversation open.

Encourage your employees to share their needs as they arise. Within your teams, be sure that everyone can communicate on an ongoing basis with each other about their needs, whatever they may be, and ensure that every voice is heard.

Remember that everyone is dealing with different challenges, and some people have more challenges than others right now. Make allowances for the unique circumstances that each person is facing as this will benefit the health of your team now and in the future. These allowances can be anything from ensuring they have time for things like grocery shopping, cooking, and taking care of their families to looking after their mental and physical health needs.

2.  Schedule frequent breaks

Screen time can become overwhelming, and everyone works and feels better when they can move, rest, and take their mind away from work. Taking breaks will help increase creativity, improve physical and mental health, and help boost everyone’s mood.

Schedule breaks in any long meetings.

Encourage your team to get away from the computer, move, stretch, hydrate, get a snack, or whatever else they need to do.

Allow your teams to self-determine their breaks and lunches.

Consider allowing your teams to coordinate their lunch and break times among themselves. This will allow for greater flexibility while also creating more coordination, and employees will be able to take care of the demands in their life with the support of their team. (As a bonus, it takes this task off your desk.)

3.  Support a healthy work-life balance

This is essential when your employees are working from home and even more so in this time when many employees have their entire families at home with them due to COVID-19 restrictions and concerns. For many people, working from home during shelter-in-place periods involves balancing many competing responsibilities. It’s important that you are aware of this and are sensitive to how it might change people’s needs and productivity capacities. The more you can adapt to your employees’ circumstances, the better your teams will do, and your employees will thank you for it

Set clear boundaries and expectations regarding work hours.

Make sure your team knows when they are expected to be working and when they are not, and keep those times sacred. One of the most common ways that these boundaries are crossed is when calls, texts, or emails are exchanged when your employees are supposed to be “off the clock.” Be sure they know when they are not expected to respond. This alone can go a long way to fostering a healthier work-from-home culture.

4.  Offer recommendations for creating healthy working conditions

Encourage your employees to create a “container” for work. 

Suggestions you can give employees include:

• • • Consider choosing one room or area in your home as the play where you work. This way, when you are there, you will know you need to be working, and when you are away, it’s easier to take your mind off work.
    • Another way to set work-life boundaries is to consider using just one device for work (for example, working on your laptop but using your phone only for non-work activities).
    • Decorate or adjust your work environment to make it pleasant and enjoyable for you. Even small touches can make a difference.

Encourage team members to choose a good desk setup.

It should allow them to maintain proper body alignment. They can also consider using a standing desk or alternate between the two. Maintaining good posture is a key to working with an alert, happy mind and for promoting physical health and vitality.

Offer recommendations and reminders for team members to keep healthy food around.

Food is the foundation of health, and the more we can keep healthy food around and limit foods that don’t support health, the better we will feel and function. You can get some ideas from this article.

5. Create opportunities for health

• • Give your team access to free classes they can try, such as meditation, yoga, and exercise classes, as well as mental health resources. (Access to our CredibleMind platform is an excellent example of the latter.)
  • Consider scheduling some time for meditation or a mindfulness exercise at the beginning of meetings to help set a mindful culture.
  • Include reminders in your company communications to frequently get up and move and say that it’s okay to take breaks for mental and physical health. Even a few seconds of high-intensity exercise repeated regularly throughout the day can counteract some of the effects of sitting all day.
  • Remember that these reminders are only as useful as the structures you create to allow your employees to take the time they need.

An employee’s connection to the company is as strong as their connection to their direct supervisor. You can help your company thrive during these challenging times by supporting your employees.

As a leader, you have an opportunity to make a huge difference in the lives of your employees. This is a time that everyone will remember, and you can use it to help a lot of people and to show your team that you care about them. By listening to their needs, leading by example, and building health into the structures of the workday, you can help everyone to thrive.

At CredibleMind, we can help you and your company become a place where everyone can flourish.