Addressing Mental Health in a Hybrid Workplace

Working in a hybrid environment requires paying attention to making safe and comfortable work conditions, especially when it comes to your employees’ mental health. The mental aspect matters a lot in any relations, especially now.

Clarity of communication, setting plans, and getting feedback are things that are only at the surface. Forming a psychologically safe workplace requires lots of attention and tips related to human nature and combining its specifics effectively with technical approaches. 

Basic Points

We will start from the basic point about the workplace psychology any person should consider. Yes, even if you are not a boss, you should also be aware of such and apply to succeed (or at least increase your chances). Let’s review precisely safety initiative ideas in the workplace everyone should know and apply when it is possible and, of course, when that is necessary.

Practice awareness

Be attentive to the surroundings you are working in. This becomes especially important in stressful situations when you need to respond fast, or something goes wrong. 

How to ensure psychological safety in the workplace in such conditions? Focus on making required actions instead of paying attention to emotions. Recognize emotions but not be driven by such. Consider them as fuel for your actions only. This can substantially prevent situations of transferring stress to others. 

Be aware of what is happening now, what actions you should take, and change your behavior appropriately to the situation. Even if someone has done something wrong, notice your emotions while communicating with this person and calm yourself down. That is easy when it comes to daily practice.

Make communications maximally effective

That is extremely important for achieving more while doing any business. Communications are everywhere. The more effectively you do that – the better results you can get in the end. What is primary here? It is necessary to get a better understanding of your communication strategies, visit some training, according to the mobile app development firm leader, find out more.

But first of all – you should start to treat yourself from the point you are going to demand or ensure for your employees.

This means that if you are going to demand making work in time, you should do the same, with your own example, yes. If you wish to treat your employees with more respect and warmth, make sure you are not going to do that from the point of lack of respect and warmth to yourself, expecting that somebody will treat you with these feelings. 

Of course, the formal aspect always remains. But, start from yourself first to set your limits and increase leadership capacities gradually. Stated feelings are important for arranging a comfortable and more productive environment in most cases of healthy work relations.

Apart from the emotional side that creates an important background for your communications, also pay attention to the formal side of your relations. Speak to the point only. That is a good example for all employees they will follow in contact with each other. This impacts a lot the effectiveness of doing business, especially online.

Also, don’t be afraid to request creative workplace safety ideas from your employees. This is another form of making your team feel their opinion is heard and considered when they really introduce good ideas. And by the way, that is an opportunity for another thing – giving feedback.

Feedback is …

A true miracle when made well. This point becomes especially important for leaders who are reading through this article. The best choice here is to model feedback given to your team. Making this is possible only if you consider all peculiarities of characters your employees express while working with you.

The best thing here is to diversify an approach. One manner of communication may work with one person but maybe less productive with the others. Decide for yourself: are you a boss whom all should be afraid of or a leader who knows how to approach everyone and get maximum reward from teamwork. That is a number of times easier to work in comfortable hybrid workplace culture in terms of communication in the first turn.

What else is important here? While communicating with employees and giving feedback, it is extremely important to do this giving a feeling of predictability. If you set some goals to achieve, your team should clearly understand what they should do. 

And if something has changed, explain to your employees what had happened and force them to change your plans without overloading details, of course. Trust and predictability matter a lot for team management and a psychologically safe environment, especially during challenging times.

If you are an employee, be receptive to feedback. Even if a person who provides that doesn’t do that perfectly, that is not a point for losing important information for enhancing the quality of your work. Focus on the achieved results and actions you should take.

More opportunities for socializing

That is extremely important to keep some at least minor personal contacts unless you are not relocating to work in a different corner of the world. But, even if this is so, it is very important to have joint at least 5-minutes meetings online. Why? You may reconfirm you are moving in the same direction and perform all determined plans well, as that should be.

Also, treat seriously an opportunity of building a hybrid workplace culture if you are a boss. Set the standards and approaches of communication you apply on your own and give such an example to your employees day-by-day.

Arranging seminars for your team to boost their professional qualifications may also help a lot with building effective models of interaction. And, of course, spending time together occasionally, on tourism trips, may also serve well for the development of productive relations.

Setting limits

It is always important during any communication, especially when we speak about working relations. Even if you provide enough freedom and flexibility while arranging the relations with your employees, that doesn’t mean the freedom of doing anything that they like. 

Perfectly, if you as a boss form internal rules with basic communicative standards everyone should follow, and you also follow such, of course. For instance, you never discuss any personal matters. Even if they have an impact on making your joint work, you talk only about strategies on how to share obligations and prevent possible negative consequences.

But, you pay respect to somebody’s personal circumstances at the same time. That is a way of building long-term productive relations in a healthy work environment. Keeping a balance here is a very important and good skill to gain.

Encouraging creativity

People may feel satisfied when they have enough space for personal and professional growth. As a leader, you should ensure the exact space where your employees may express creativity and interest in their fields of expertise. They should feel free to express their ideas. 

For an employee, it is better to pick the right manner of presenting ideas. Keeping yourself neutral at the start and changing the model of your interaction a bit later – when you have formed a basic understanding of how your boss works – is probably the best strategy to succeed.

Finals Words

Hope these psychological safety examples have clarified or inspired you for boosting productivity in a workplace you have now. Clarity, trust, and a balancing approach – things of primary importance during communications in a hybrid workplace both for a boss and employees.