WFH has created a lot of challenges to team morale and mental health. What have been the most valuable services that your organization has offered employees?
VP, Customer and Technical Operations in Software, 501 - 1,000 employees
We instituted recharge days. We didn't do it in November and December, but we have done it every other month, where everybody shuts down. And it works, because telling people to take a day off when they're at home, they often end up working. But getting the whole company to take the day off, all of a sudden, I would think of something, I'd say, "You know what? I'm not going to bug anybody with that." As opposed to when it's partial, everybody ends up working. So that's been really effective.Also, no one was taking PTO, so we encouraged them to take the time off by having a cash out program. So if you took a week of PTO, then you could cash out a week. A few folks from my team said, "What's the point of taking it, I'm going to do anything?" And after they took some time off some said, "I didn't expect it, but I took a week off and it was really good. I actually stayed away from working, and I feel better." And so I think that helped quite a bit.
CISO in Software, 51 - 200 employees
We have a mentalist that performs for our company. It's pretty cool. So he's kind of like a magician, but he guesses things, and it's crazy. He can do it over Zoom as well. And it's just baffling. He'll just pick some random person and say, "Get out some cards, do this." And then they'll show him the card, or whatever he wrote down, he'll get all these different things. And then he'll just ask people random questions, which is your favorite vacation spot or whatever. And then he'll pull it out of a sealed envelope or something. It's just nuts. So we have that once a quarter, and everybody can join that. That's a good relief vector for us.CIO in Manufacturing, 1,001 - 5,000 employees
There's a company called Ryptic, I think, that does online team building activities. We've done those a bit, and that's been a big hit as well. We've had a few little outside spaced gatherings, and things like that, they do definitely help. And I think it's just trying to find the groups that are comfortable, those that are comfortable in that kind of environment doing it. I think the people that would never consider doing online stuff, team-building, have started to do some of it, and seeing that it's actually pretty fun too. So that's been a learning as well. Trying to be creative for sure. Our HR team's done a really good job in introducing mental health and wellness ideas and resources. That's been good for us too.CIO in Education, 1,001 - 5,000 employees
+1 on Headspace. We do offer an employee assistance program (EAP). I would say this is a topic that admittedly I didn’t pay close enough attention to until the last couple of months. Working remotely, workload, pandemic, politics and unplanned outages took a greater toll on my team then I expected. We’ve started talking about it in weekly leadership meetings and 1:1’s and it’s made a difference.
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Director of IT, Self-employed
One thing I do is include them in the meetings about the changes that will take place and get their opinion. I also lay out the pros and cons of the changes and how it will effect us as a team moving forward.Always12%
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We also instituted things, I think a lot of companies have, like mandatory shutdowns for, in some cases, it just a couple of days in the middle of the summer. I think last year we did a whole week right around the 4th of July. Where normally you'd only get a day or two, they just said, "The whole week. It's a shutdown. The entire company." And guess what? It was awesome, because you didn't have to check email and you weren't worried about missing something, unlike when you go on vacation, obviously not that there's a lot of places to go on vacation right now. Those are some of the things I think also help when we talk about working from home, especially in COVID. Those are things companies should be at least considering. It's been a good experience for us, and we didn't invent it. We were hearing it from other companies that were doing it. So we sort of said, "Hey, maybe we should try that."