Sunday expands their employees’ benefit for employees’ mental health.
Even working from home could decrease the risk of COVID – 19 infection, Sunday are aware that it is essential to support both Physical and Mental Health.
As Sunday was working in a “Hybrid Working Environment” in which employees can alternately work from home and from office starting in 2020, we found that a long period of working from home could undermine our employees more than we imagined.
We certainly consider employees’ mental health as our priority, hence we enlarge our benefit which allows employees to consult with certified psychotherapists from our trusted partner, which is a mental service platform that allows employees to connect to the psychotherapist virtually.
Why working from home could lead to mental health issues?
Not everyone loves working from home and not every home has a supportive working environment. Stress could be caused by communicating virtually instead of face to face, not seeing any of your friends for a period, the economy effects by COVID – 19, hearing bad news through social media etc.
Refer from the situation stress could caused by
- Working from home could reduce the concentration and motivation.
Home environments directly affect working circumstances. Some houses are hard to find a personal space as people live with their family and pets, this could lead to lack of concentration. When you are working alone in a different environment, it could also cause a lack of motivation to work as you are not in your accustomed working environment.
- Stress from the unexpected situation which requires resilience
As we faced COVID-19, when people started to have a little symptom of illness, it could worry them and make them doubt if they are infected by COVID-19. (That’s why our lab created Helio – our symptom checker bot so we all can be worry free for everyone!)
It is also hard to verify the disease at home and it’s also risky to get to the crowded hospital to get the result. The situation is more difficult when people can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is out of their control. All these situations could easily draw people to stress and depress.
- When people have to stay in one place and unable to travel to anywhere for a period, it could lead to depression and solitary
For an extrovert, being alone in their own home or condominium, working from home for couples of months without going anywhere or needing to isolate themselves for quarantine may feel like being in a prison. Reports also show that being alone for a quarantine in a long period of time, increases a risk of being depressed by 20 – 30%.
- Working from home could cause inertia and lead to low self-control
With higher flexibility and freedom, some may not have enough pressure for triggering them to work actively. If they don’t usually have a strict schedule or planning on what they will do everyday, the situation could easily cause inertia and lower their self-control and this may affect their work and create a negative thought about themselves too.
How can we support mental health while people are working from home?
After we encounter situations that significantly affect people’s mental health while working from home, here are our suggestions…
First step is to investigate whether we have any uneasy feelings, loneliness, can’t stop thinking about work, having insomnia for several nights or even feeling unconfident or insecure. If you are feeling hard on yourself or have several symptoms of stress as mentioned, that is a sign for us to start paying attention to our mental health!
Starting to have a schedule for the routine. Having a specific time for waking up, sleeping, resting and working will not just help you to work effectively but also help you to have a clear timing for yourself to rest and enjoy your hobby which could relieve stress.
Communicate with colleagues to sustain a working relationship and reduce inertia.
Not only reduce inertia, regularly communicating with colleagues will trigger your working mood and build up a good relationship with colleagues.
Lastly, seeking advice from psychotherapists can cause you no harm!
Whenever you have uneasy feelings, opening up and sharing those hard feelings to someone who really listens and understands are always helpful.
At Sunday we have a benefit for not only physical but mental support, our employees can use a service from our trusted partner which dedicatedly provided several psychotherapists in their platform for supporting the users. All the psychotherapists are experienced as well as certified for counseling.
Sunday already implements mental support benefits since the middle of 2020 which is when we start our working from home policy.
We found that this benefit not only helps employees to easily get counseling from psychotherapists but also encourages employees to be aware of the importance of their mental health as well as to educate everyone that it’s okay to seek help from professional services!