It goes without saying that the last two years have had a significant impact on everyone’s mental health. Even prior to the pandemic, mental health was struggling to get the attention and resources that it truly deserves. Uncertainty tends to breed anxiety, both in and out of the workplace, and we’re seeing this at new levels as the pandemic continues and we continue to trudge through unprecedented times.
On a positive note, this renewed (and necessary) focus on mental health has given us an opportunity to have some honest conversations about how mental health no longer stays at home, and whether it’s work or personal life, it’s all interconnected. Supporting the mental health of your entire team in the middle of a global pandemic feels like a massive undertaking, so we asked what so many other organizations have posed to their team members: what can truly be done at an organizational level to help support you at work? We don’t have all the answers, but we’ve found that sharing resources is the best way to start putting together a plan and move forward. There’s always more to do, but when it comes to mental health and supporting our team members, here’s what Webspec has tackled in 2021.
Company Culture Survey
We ended 2020 and kicked off the new year with a culture survey that was sent out to the entire team. Together with a third-party firm, we constructed a survey that would gather feedback on core categories including our vision, mission, and values, training and employee development, communication, workplace culture. Our goal was also to create a survey structure that would ensure employees felt safe participating and allow for sharing general ideas and feedback as much as possible; because of this, the entire survey was anonymous and the data was analyzed by our consultant.
What we learned
Ultimately we saw 71% participation from the team, with representation from each division and team which we were very pleased with. This was undoubtedly a strange time to send out a culture survey that focused on well-being—not just because we were in the middle of a pandemic, but also because we were significantly changing the structure of our teams—but it ended up being a great sharing exercise that the staff appreciated being able to do.
The culture survey was one of the most beneficial exercises we’ve done as a team over the years for a few reasons:
- We got specific feedback on areas where we could invest in more training.
- The staff shared input on our top-down transparency.
- We received concrete ideas on how to improve benefits, company culture, and organizational communication.
- We outlined key action items so we had a place to start making improvements right away, as well as long-term action items to work towards.
We didn’t go into the culture survey with the intention of improving mental health, but what we found was that company culture and your experiences at work have a significant impact on well-being and that presents an opportunity for us to do better.
Mental Health Training Focus
As part of our 2021 roadmap, we identified some focus areas to highlight in our training efforts as a company each quarter, starting with mental health in Q1. We partnered with local trainer Melissa Vine on a training session titled “It Can Get Better: Minding Your Mental Health.” The goal of this training was to give team members the skills to identify mental health struggles in themselves and their co-workers, and give them more resources to be able to navigate these as it relates to work.
Sharing More Resources
In addition to our training in Q1, we also made a point to share mental health resources, tips, articles, and podcasts on a weekly basis with the team. These resources and tips came to us from team members who were willing to share their stories as well as things we found as a leadership and human resources group, and we sent out these tips in our Monday staff emails.
Mindfulness & Grounding Exercises
Content & SEO Lead, Bethany, shared some resources to get started with mindfulness and grounding and how to find a therapist that works for you.
If you struggle with anxiety, did you know it can actually make your anxiety worse to try to get rid of it? Many mental health professionals focus anxiety treatment around acceptance and management. Instead of avoiding situations that make you anxious, you can work toward deciding which activities that cause you anxiety (social activities, presentations, driving, doctor visits, etc.) are worth the anxiety they cause because of the positive outcomes.
Mindfulness and grounding exercises can help you become more aware of how anxiety makes your body feel and what you can do to make peace with it.
Helpful resources:
- The Mindful Way Through Anxiety book
- Mindful meditation video – Taking a few moments to observe your breathing and how your body feels during the day can help you identify signs of anxiety
- Talk therapy (in person or remote) – Psychology Today’s “Find a Therapist” feature allows you to filter by practice area, location, and insurance types they accept to make your search easier.
Coping With Cruelty Online
Director of Product Development, Stacey Cooper, shared an article from Brene Brown that discusses the impact of social media and online cruelty has on our mental health.
Social media is a huge drain on our resources when it comes to our time and our mental health, especially after a year like 2020. One of my favorite authors this year, Brene Brown, recently wrote a great article in Vogue about coping with cruelty online and how it’s so hard to balance that with our need for connection. You can check it out here.
Make It OK Campaign
Leadership shared the Make It OK campaign to create a foundation for understanding mental health and mental illness. Mental illnesses are treatable health conditions that are very common in our society, but it can be hard to talk about them due to shame, negative perceptions from others, or fear of discrimination. Identifying some of the most common mental illnesses and learning more about them is the first step. Make It OK has a great guide on their website to break down some of the most common mental illnesses and the stigmas that come along with them.
An overview of the campaign from their website:
“Make It OK” is a campaign to reduce the stigma of mental illnesses. The organizations involved in this campaign have pledged their commitment to change the hearts and minds about the misperceptions of mental illnesses by encouraging open conversations and education on the topic. You can find out more by visiting https://makeitok.org/.
Flexibility
One of the biggest lessons that came from the pandemic was the need for flexibility. Webspec had offered flexible time off and had been set up to allow remote work for about a year before the pandemic hit. Even with all of that flexibility we realized we still needed to pivot and introduced a few updates to our policies in 2021 with the goal of improving our employee experience and giving the team control over deciding when and how they work best.
Flexible Time Off
If we learned anything in 2020, it’s that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to taking time away from work. Sometimes we’re all just doing our best to get through the week. At the beginning of 2021, we moved to an entirely open “take the time you need” set up for our time. If you have a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the week? No problem. If your kids or pets are sick and you need to focus on caring for them for part of the day? Go for it. We know things come up and sometimes you just need a minute. All we ask for is proactive communication and planning so we can get coverage or move work around.
Our goal is the team can decide if they appreciate the flexibility during the week or if they want to wait and take some more dedicated time off to get away.
Work Where You Want
Remote work became the norm in 2020, but as a web agency we had been set up for working from home for a while already. Our clients are all over the country and we even began to add staff members in other states, or saw team members choose to move for a change of scenery. So we decided to make returning to the office optional; you can come in full time, part time, work from home, or a combination of all three. Do we miss being all in the same location every day? Sure, but we also know that the new norm means giving our team the ability to find what works best for them so they can continue to do great work and live their lives.
More Frequent Check-Ins
Having team members spread around the country and in different work environments means we have to get creative with how we connect on a daily basis. We tasked our team leads with structuring check-ins on how it works best for their team members. At the organizational level, we learned in our culture survey that our staff appreciated the opportunity to give feedback throughout the year, outside of their annual review, so we decided to add a quarterly check-in with each team member and our HR Generalist.
These meetings center around an assessment from their team lead to identify if they’re meeting expectations and where they can put their focus during the next quarter. It also gives HR a chance to check in on everyone and take action if there’s anyone struggling; this might include encouraging people to take time away from work or figure out who needs more help on their team. Ultimately it gives individuals a chance to share candid feedback in a safe space and know their ideas are being heard.
Organizational Transparency
A strong theme that emerged from our culture survey was how important it is for leadership to be on the same page and communicate a consistent message from the top down. Clearly communicating the vision for the organization and how everyone is contributing to that has a significant effect on mental health and well-being at work, more than we realized.
This feedback from our team has allowed us to make changes in how we communicate company updates. We’ve made the decision to expand our leadership meetings to include directors for more input and they have the opportunity to share reports with their teams after each meeting. Our bi-weekly company meetings let anyone come to hear updates firsthand and ask direct questions and we send out the same updates in our Monday weekly emails. We keep running notes from company updates in our project management tool so everyone can go back and reference these later. No one is going to get it right all the time, but we have a better understanding of the impact it has on employees and we’re more mindful of how, when, and where we communicate key updates.
Mental health looks different for every individual and it’s constantly evolving. There’s no cookie-cutter approach that we can include in our policies that will work for everyone on the team. We’re not experts, but we hope that sharing some of these ideas helps other organizations start to open up a dialogue about how work impacts mental health. If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that we’re always learning. Our hope is that we can continue to cultivate a culture of feedback, provide clear communication and transparency, and listen to our team to create a positive and supportive workplace experience.