Self-care is the key to dealing with WFH mental health issues

The work from home (WFH) arrangement that companies were forced to adopt because of the Covid-19 pandemic is starting to take its toll on the mental health of employees.

Dr. Ma. Gia Grace Sison, Head of the Women’s Wellness Center of Makati Medical Center, said the WFH setup gave rise to more household work and childcare for both parents and amplified certain social divides such as health and economics, among others.

She pointed out that among stressors in the WFH arrangement are financial concerns, physical health, mental health, work performance, family pressures, and time management, a very common issue among employees.

“Mental health problems are complex, a balancing and a dynamic act, or a combination of work stressors and our personal lives. We say that it has to be separated but sometimes, it can’t be done,” she said.

Dr. Sison was one of the speakers in the third and final installment of the “Lifespaces” webinar series “Let’s Talk About Stress: Promoting Mental Health in the Workplace” organized by Colliers International, together with the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) and the British Chamber of Commerce Philippines.

Employee engagement

Indust ry and medical experts were present to shed light and provide guidance on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the mental health of employees, redefining employee engagement on a digital level and the importance of company culture in managing mental health and stress.

Dr. Sison said mental health problems can have an impact on both employers and employees. For employers, it can be increased absenteeism, decreased productivity leading to reduced morale, high staff turnover, early retirement, and/or complaints. On the employee side, it can be decreased quality of life, economic effect and worse, stigma and discrimination.

But perhaps the biggest change that the pandemic and the WFH arrangement created is it diminished the dynamism of interaction between officemates in an actual office.

“By nature, people are social beings so the changes like physical distancing can have its toll on one’s mental health. Support networks are important to help build that safe space either at the physical office or at home so we can talk to someone when loneliness hits us. That is something that everyone has to start to live with, especially now,” Dr. Sison said.

Home away from home

For Maann Reyes, Vice President of Human Resources at Everise, as a BPO company, Everise is alive 24/ 7 and the office is bursting with life, but then the pandemic changed everything. Now, 90 percent of their work force are WFH but 10 percent actually live in the office.

“We literally provided a home away from home to ensure that the 10 percent can continue earning because they can’t work from home. Not everybody can work from home because of several issues like the right work environment or connectivity,” Reyes said.

She noticed that for those who WFH, there is a very thin line between managing stress in the household and during their shift. For those who think WFH is easy, it is not. It’s even twice or thrice as hard, especially from a human resources perspective.

“It’s harder to engage people you don’t see so we try to check our staff doing WFH from time to time to find out how we can help them in this pandemic,” Reyes said.

As for Globe Telecom, Victoria Marquez, the telco’s Employee Experience expert, said the telecom industry’s work environment is quite busy so Globe started preparing even before the pandemic. They came up with a Covid-19 tracing “bot” to ask employees how they are doing, with an open design so they would know if they have Covid-19 symptoms. The bot, however, became a reporting platform for employees with possible mental health issues.

“So we started loading the bot with services they can access like telehealth consultation for psychiatric services,” Marquez said.

Chat service

The y also started a chat service for those who may have mental health issues but are afraid to discuss with an actual person. “Even if it’s just a chat service, the most important thing was we kept communication lines open for the employees to express freely what they are feeling,” Marquez said.

In terms of best practices that companies can adapt to engage its employees and maintain the company culture despite WFH, Dr. Sison said short online conversations can work. At Globe, Marquez said their policy was “Ask, Listen and Respond.” But with this pandemic, the number of WFH issues raised in the bot alarmed them. They discovered that people were having difficulty establishing boundaries for themselves because they did not know what they can ask for, and there is always the lingering fear of being seen as unproductive.

She said people at Globe are very competitive and customer oriented so they will really burn themselves out if they don’t draw the line. “So we came up with meeting guidelines like no meetings during lunchtimes or weekends. Since engagement protocols vary between teams, the guidelines make teams aware if they are violating a culture that another team has.”

Dr. Sison stressed that self- care should be an important aspect in an employee’s life, even if under a WFH setup. For Reyes, it’s about creating a dedicated space at home as work place. “As soon as you’re off the shift, get out of that place and be with the family. It should be a conscious effort to draw the line that separates work life from family life.”

With Marquez, it is to build a habit of paying attention to the body. She said people should learn to listen to their bodies to know when it’s the right time to stop or scale back. “If you’re a go- getter, learn when it’s time to let go especially in this pandemic. We were used to doing so many things at the same time, like having a social life, pursuing our dreams, or trying to be fit. But I believe that the world is asking us to reevaluate and reassess what matters to us so find an activity or control mechanism that works best for you.”