This pandemic does not seem to be going away in a hurry and stress levels are not showing any signs of abating. The human mind is supposed to take stress sometimes but never has it been challenged for such an extended period of time. With a house full of distractions — a spouse also working from home or who’s been laid off, constant exposure to negative information, children who need attention and help with schoolwork, elders getting more and more crabby or maybe all of the above — it can seem like a daunting task to remain productive and, most importantly, sane. 

It therefore is a moral responsibility of organizations to help whichever way they could to help their people stay sane. Here are 5 quick tips that we have put together seeing what’s working for our clients.

1.   Model sane (read healthy) behaviour from the top and “listen”

Hackneyed yes! But true too. 

So if you are a leader with a team working with you the best thing that you can do for them is to model a life which is sane. While you would know the obvious ones let me point out some unusual ones. Speaking of how you deal with challenges in a superhuman manner is not healthy, listening is. 

2.   Introduce simple practices for stress reduction

Doing sessions to teach people yoga might get you a tick in the box for a wellness initiative but chances of a one off session being successful are highly unlikely. On the other hand, simple techniques like taking a break every couple of hours or long breaths every hour or a 5-minute Yoga protocol (created by the Ayush ministry) done at one time all across the organization work better. Insist on getting some simple things like this get etched into the DNA of your people.

3.   Help employees manage their environment at home

Stress, as people work from home is a combination of work stress and stress induced by (before) unknown circumstances at home – like classes of kids, no demarcated workspaces, elders behaving like kids, no help, repeated sanitization stressor etc. Make a list of these and then ask yourself – which of these can I help with:

Do a Bollywood quiz of the 60s and 70s for entire families: Make teams of families using MS Teams/ Zoom becoming an order for the day. This is easy and would make some elders have something to be busy with gainfully.

What I mean is anything which takes the pressure of your employee. 

4.   Make access to support available

These are unprecedented times and people need help. Organize as much access to support as you can. Doesn’t matter whether people use it or not, the facts that “help is there when I need” is a de-stressor in itself. This access to support can be an EAP service to seek counselling support, a support group of young parents, or access to a doctor for advice, etc.

5.   Keep an eye on the social wellbeing[1] index

Remember that the new is not yet “normal”. People were used to meeting colleagues and having a good laugh over a joke, have random coffee chats as against calendared coffee chats, mimic the boss’ patronizing tone etc. and these helped them deal with the stress. All that has gone missing – no text chat with emoticons can fill in entirely for that. Recognize that and think of ways to make people feel they belong. These need not be “into your face” kind of initiatives but subtle moves. Study the environment – talk around and then think of ways to ensure that social wellbeing is taken care of.