Corporate wellness programs are understood to be an important resource for employees of any business to take advantage of. But what do you do if you are a freelancer or otherwise self-employed? What about if you are a remote worker who only frequently contacts the rest of your team? What if your business doesn’t have an employee wellness program?
While employee wellness programs are important, true workplace wellness begins with you. If you are a remote worker, or otherwise isolated from your employee wellness program, you don’t need to feel alone. This piece will explain some easy ways to improve your workplace wellbeing.
Even if you’re familiar with terms like mental health or employee wellness, you may not be fully familiar with mental fitness. Essentially, mental fitness is going one step behind being simply “well”. It means actively improving your capacity to handle your stress and emotions. Just like working out will improve your physical fitness, you can work on your mental resilience to improve your mental fitness.
Just like there are different kinds of physical fitness, there are different kinds of mental fitness as well. Managing your emotions and stress levels are just a few aspects of this. Making sure that you maintain strong social links is another part of mental fitness. So is avoiding worries due to your finances and employment. Physical fitness and mental fitness are also intertwined inherently.
Many workplaces have moved over to remote work. For many of us, this has been a blessing. Losing the commute and gaining a more flexible schedule is always a plus, right? While there are plenty of benefits to remote work, it has created a lot of challenges our mental fitness.
Think about our definitions of what makes up mental fitness. Remote work can rob you of one of the most important aspects of workplace wellbeing – the social dimension. Even if you have a healthy network of friends outside of work, your coworkers are often a regular social feature for you. Losing this can be more difficult than you realize. Remote work may also tempt you to be less active and sit around the house.
Remote work can creates a lot of stress about your employment. It can be much harder to coordinate and communicate with the rest of your team and company when you aren’t physically in the office. This can create excessive anxiety over how your work is received, and how your company perceives you.
Ideally, your company will have an employee wellness program in place that considers remote workers. However, you can go a long way to improving workplace wellbeing all on your own.
Some ways are pretty obvious. Try your best to get enough exercise, even if it’s a 30 minute walk on your lunch break. Do your best to maintain enough social connections – face time a family member, meet up for a meal with a friend – don’t let yourself get isolated at home.
A lot of your mental fitness is going to develop by being able to get a handle on your new remote relationship with your workplace. This means communicating with your managers and laying out boundaries. Too often, remote work means that your job and your personal life start to blend into each other. There needs to be a clear understanding that your time off work needs to be respected. Whether that means closing your laptop at 5pm or booking your alloted vacation days, even if it means that you take a self care day at home.
You should encourage your company to look into deploying an employee wellness program that applies to even remote workers. At Liberate, we provide corporate wellness programs that are fun, easy, and can be done entirely online. If you are running a remote team, make sure to check out our demo!
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