Mental health continues to be an important conversation with an increasing awareness and understanding. It’s apparent that many people have struggled with having good mental health at some point and to varying degrees, which is why this conversation is so beneficial.
For most of us the past couple of years have been challenging and there have been huge adjustments to work life, including a big movement towards flexible working and working from home, hybrid working, or returning to the office.
Our mental health extends to how we feel in the workplace and equally our work has an impact on our mental wellbeing too, with a recent survey finding that over half of employees experience anxiety or low mood.
35% of employees feel stress at work, with workload being the most impacting factor
Working remotely offers more flexibility but it can come with its own struggles. The main benefits for most of us working from home is the flexibility and lack of commute, but some of the struggles include feeling lonely and isolated from colleagues and difficulty separating home life from work life.
As a remote-working team, we at Alchemy Medical Writing acknowledge these struggles and strive to combat them together, and I’m going to briefly talk about some key points that I think are important to help us achieve a better work-life balance, reduce stress, and feel part of a team.
1. Connecting and communicating
For me, the best and most simple way to combat feeling isolated is to reach out to my colleagues in our Teams chats, and this can be a message, a phone call, or a video call. As well as work chat, we often share gardening updates, holiday snaps, and TV recommendations, and having this more personal conversation helps to feel connected.
Opening up about good and bad days is really important too. It is amazing to celebrate the wins in life, but it is also incredibly uniting to share something that hasn’t got to plan or a task that feels tough. I’ve found that most people like to help others, and with our own knowledge and experiences we can help to shed light on that seemingly impossible brief, that difficult software, or those mind-boggling statistics. We’ve all been there, right?
2. Taking breaks
A survey revealed that 35% of employees feel stress at work, with workload being the most impacting factor. Although we can’t always determine our workload, taking time for a break and getting some down time is important for a better work-life balance, to help think more clearly and to avoid burn out! The Health and Safety Executive also recommends that we leave our desk for a short break every 30 minutes.
Consider having a mindfulness break too. Mindfulness is a practice to focus on the present moment and can help in times of feeling stress or anxiety to improve your mental wellbeing. One way you can do this is through focused breathing exercises, and here is a 2-minute video to guide you through a mindful breathing exercise from Every Mind Matters if you’d like to try this for yourself. It’s easier and more effective than you might think!
Awareness of this kind also helps us notice signs of stress or anxiety earlier and helps us deal with them better.
