Ask and listen.

This week we are celebrating the Mental Health Week in EU, and May is also the Mental Health Awareness Month in US. A great reminder to reach out to your friends and colleagues and be mindful of how they are. Especially in these challenging times of working from home, make time to talk.

The pandemic has had an impact on mental health. There has been an increased level of relapse in people with pre‐existing mental health conditions, as well as mental health problems in people with no previous mental health disorders [Byrne et al, Published 14 May 2021]. The CDC has published a guideline on how to cope with stress, admitting that people feel stress, anxiety, grief, and worry during the COVID-19 pandemic, that people might experience feelings of fear, anger, sadness, numbness, frustration, changes in appetite, energy, desires, and interests, difficulty concentrating and making decisions, difficulty sleeping, headaches, body pains, stomach problems, skin rashes, worsening of chronic health problems and mental health conditions, and increased use of tobacco, alcohol, and other substances [CDC, Updated 21 January 2021].

At HealthyMindTech we have been focusing on health in the workplace even before the pandemic. We’ve realised that too many people suffer from stress at work, and if it continues for too long without being handled, it leads to chronic stress-related illnesses. That’s why we started working on the idea of NoStress, an AI based tool that predicts work related stress levels by using data collected via smartphones, wearables, services such as email, calendar, weather information, and self-reports of stress and well-being.

With the pandemic, the issue of handling work-life balance and work-related stress has become even more important, as our personal lives have somehow over night merged with our work life. Be it taking care of kids while working, or struggling with loneliness, it has been a though period. That is not to say that the remote work doesn’t have its advantages (such as less commute time, more flexibility of handling other tasks, and more flexibility on work hours), and so it’s likely that a hybrid model of working (with some of the workers in the office and some remotely) is the future of work.

So how to keep the team engaged and connected in a setup where not everyone is physically co-located? How to create that informal coffee machine chat that we naturally have when we go in the office?

Enter Funin. Funin is an app for sharing fun ideas of activities to help survive the covid times, keeping remote teams connected, motivated, create engagement and help restore energy in remote teams.

It is available on iOS and Android.

So, how do you take care of yourself and keep connected with your team, family, and friends?

#MentalHealthMatters #EuropeanMentalHealthWeek #MentalHealthAwareness #MentalHealthMonth #LetsTalk

Hi! How are you? was originally published in Healthy Mind Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.