CHAPTER ONE
Covid, Work from Home, and Employee Well-Being

Overview

Ever since Covid shut the world down in 2020, conversations surrounding mental health have come to the forefront like never before. For too long, people were afraid to talk about and address their mental and emotional health needs. There has been and continues to be a stigma around mental health that people feared would isolate them in the workplace and possibly make them look weak, inefficient, and unproductive. After all, the workplace isn't a space one wants to be vulnerable in and so workers would simply brush their mental health needs under the rug and just ignore them.

Social isolation forced everyone to talk about this topic because the matter could no longer be ignored. It was almost as if Covid revealed to society that many of us are actually struggling with our mental health even though we didn't think we were. We were forced to face this harsh reality. Covid either brought out our mental health struggles, helped to create them due to the uncertainty it put the world in, or possibly both.

Society worldwide got completely blindsided by the pandemic. This was the first time in human history that the entire human population shared a similar struggle. Perhaps for the first time, we could truly relate to each other. Generally, whenever we watch the news and learn about some part of the world experiencing a natural disaster, we quickly become indifferent to it and the suffering of the people there because our life isn't impacted. However, Covid was different, and it forced us to relate to each other like never before.

Not feeling comfortable going to a grocery story, walking the dog, simply going for a walk; being paranoid about touching any surface that might have been touched by another person and being mandated to wear a face mask were very unnatural additions to our lifestyle that were suddenly thrust upon us. In school, we had experienced fire and earthquake drills as a preparation for such events. Some parts of the world have drills preparing for bombs or war; however, most of the world has never undergone a pandemic drill and so we were thoroughly unprepared. One of my friends, who lived in the suburbs of New Jersey, barely came out of his house for an entire year. He and his family were afraid to even go into their backyard. When they received mail or Amazon deliveries, they would leave them in one part of their house for 24-48 hours before touching them. We went from thinking that Covid would pass in a few weeks to becoming completely paranoid about engaging in activities that once seemed completely normal.

For the first several months, I washed all our vegetables with hot water and even soap out of anxiety of getting Covid. Everything that came into the house was cleaned, wiped, or sprayed.

Pre-Covid, many dreamed of and romanticized the idea of working from home in their pajamas and how nice it would be to have the whole house to themselves, free to do as they please. Life gives us part of what we wish for, but it doesn't always give it to us in exactly the way we want. So, we got to work from home in the attire of our choice, for at least the lower part of our body, but we had our entire family at home with us, with everyone competing for work and study space.

Many liked the idea of being able to work from home, but for a majority, trying to get work done while having to tend to the needs of family, pets, and managing household chores, all at the same time, turned out to be a much more daunting task than anyone could have anticipated. We love our families but being around them 24/7 was much more than we were prepared for. In addition to a crowded home environment, people ended up working longer hours. Many felt pressured to put in extra hours because they didn't need to go into the office and felt a need to prove to their bosses that they weren't slacking off while they were at home. People's commute times became nonexistent, which translated into extra hours of work. Gone were the lunch hours, the casual conversations with colleagues, and the general camaraderie that exists in an office environment.

Then there were those without families, living in small apartments in big cities, who were bouncing off the walls and losing their minds because Covid was keeping them locked up in a tiny studio or one-bedroom apartment with little to no interaction with friends, families, or colleagues. Humanity was being severely tested and a global mental health crisis was emerging. This was something corporations could no longer ignore. Companies were realizing that if they didn't provide care for their employees' mental health, they would not only see a significant drop in productivity levels but they would also experience a large dropoff in retention numbers.

Employee Mental Health

Covid gave individuals and corporations a huge wake-up call in terms of the importance of maintaining and managing the mental and emotional well-being of its workforce. These are core needs of humans, and companies began to realize that since an employee spends over half of their waking time at the workplace and since the workplace is responsible for a good chunk of the stress in a person's life, they needed to take partial responsibility to address and provide support for the mental health concerns of their employees. It seems only reasonable that if an organization is hiring someone and expecting them to dedicate a good portion of their mental, physical, and emotional energy into the workplace, there needs to be some reciprocation beyond just a paycheck. A paycheck is good, but it's not enough. Money can allow an individual to buy things to make their life comfortable and pay bills. It can also relieve a certain amount of stress we experience; however, it cannot replenish the mental and emotional exhaustion that can be experienced at the end of the workday or workweek.

A human being is more than a number and the productivity they bring into the workplace. They have a life outside of work that involves family, health, finances, social obligations, and so many other essential components. When companies focus only on the skillset and the productivity potential of the individual being hired or already in the organization and neglect the rest of what makes that person human, that creates a serious disconnect. Unfortunately, this is how most corporations have dealt with their employees in the past, but Covid helped sound an alarm that something needed to change with the attitude and approach an organization has toward its employees. The volcano of mental health was beginning to erupt and emergency measures were needed to bring this under control.

People were, more than ever before, ready to walk away from jobs that didn't provide the right care, environment, and work culture to help them thrive and remain happy in the workplace. Thus the "Great Resignation" started to take place in 2020 and 2021. According to Wikipedia, the main reasons for quitting were ". wage stagnation amid rising cost of living, limited opportunities for career advancement, hostile work environments, lack of benefits, inflexible remote work policies, and long-lasting job dissatisfaction.1 My fiancée left her job at a major bank because they were unwilling to let her work from home and wanted everyone back in the office. I had moved to Florida from New Jersey while she was living in Columbus, Ohio. In order for her to make the move so we could be together, she found a job with another financial institution that allowed for fully remote work. Many companies were able to make the adjustment to remote work while others refused to budge, ended up losing great talent to other organizations.

Creating Boundaries While Working from Home

One of the biggest struggles people have faced while working from home is learning to create boundaries between when they start working and when they finish. Pre-Covid, one would physically walk out of the house to get to work and then walk out of the office and drive home. This ritual created a natural boundary between home and work life. The problem with the home office is that the boundary no longer exists and our workaholic tendencies can easily take over. Many find themselves starting work while eating breakfast, which is taking away from family time. This working pattern can easily spill over to dinnertime, which is crucial for deepening connections with loved ones. This is especially important while everyone is working and studying from home and tensions are on the rise.

In the many speeches I have been giving, during and post-Covid, I have been encouraging people to learn to create these boundaries. A lack of boundaries will lead to burnout and will negatively affect our personal relationships. Here are a few ways in which we can go about creating a divide between our work and personal life, while working from home:

1. Write down, on a Post-it Note or notepad, what time your workday will start and when it will end. Make sure the note is visible to you. Writing something down creates a greater level of commitment to follow through on it.
2. Make a note of when you'll take breaks during your workday. Additionally, write down how you plan to use your break time and what activity you will engage in. The last thing we want to do is have an unplanned break time and just spend that 10 minutes scrolling on your phone, because that's not letting our brain decompress....