After Remote Hiring & Onboarding, Mental Health and Staff Welfare Is the Next Big Challenge for Employers

One in four of us are now working from home.

That’s an average across the whole of the UK. But in industries like tech, that figure will undoubtedly be a lot higher, with several companies unveiling permanent remote working policies.

By this point, tech teams have demonstrated that they can operate out of the office without hampering productivity or service quality. And they’ve continued hiring too.

So we can all give ourselves a pat on the back, right?

Well, maybe not.

Sure, there have been plenty of good news stories, and things have definitely been a lot smoother than a lot of us feared at the start of Covid.

But it’s not all been plain sailing. I know of candidates who’ve been hired and started a new role during the pandemic, and have already left – without ever having set foot in the office.

Mental health is a big factor in that. If you’re not looking after your team then you’re at risk of losing them to your competition, as we know the war on technical talent hasn’t slowed down.

Businesses have to start investing in innovative and meaningful ways of looking after their employees at home. It’s not enough to just call people once a week to ask, “How are you getting on?” As mental health stems back to people not feeling comfortable with speaking about it.

Think about it. When we were all in the office, before all this happened, how often would any of us say, “I need a day off because I'm struggling with my mental health”? 

In my experience, it’s pretty rare. Yet we wouldn’t think twice about asking for time off for a headache.

I’m pretty sure this is something a lot of you can relate to. You might even have first-hand experience; I know I have.

I had mental health issues when I left my previous business; I was living alone and when anyone called to see how I was getting on, I’d just say, “I'm fine.” It took people going above and beyond, coming to see me and making sure I was going out, eating well and keeping fit, that I managed to get through it.

As much as mental health has to become more magnified, it's become harder to detect in a remote world. As my colleague, AmarTi’s Head of Delivery Amardeep Sirha, puts it: “Now I'm at home all day and you think I'm just wandering around in my home, with all this ample space, and that I’m not struggling with my mental health.” 

We recently sat down for an amazing podcast which you can watch and listen to here.

As a Delivery Manager, Amardeep knows what it’s like to run a remote team, and understands the importance of checking in regularly to find out how people are coping. At the start of the pandemic, she wrote a lot of letters – “I thought people receiving letters and little packages in the post will really help them,” she explains – and she’s going to do the same as we re-enter lockdown.

I’ve been having similar conversations with Mat Barrow, CEO at X-Lab, who tells me: “Probably the most important part of my role is looking after the people.”

Previously, he’d look out for non-verbal cues to identify if someone was having a hard time: “Such and such seems a bit quiet today, or seems a bit more noisy, but not in the way I would have expected.” 

Unsurprisingly, he’s had to adapt his approach to staff wellbeing now that he and his team aren’t in the office. 

With that in mind, X-Lab have introduced a bunch of new initiatives designed to encourage socialising in the remote world we’re currently all living in – everything from virtual one-on-one coffee chats, to virtual quizzes and Friday afternoon trips to the “virtual pub”, where everyone jumps on a Google Meet and has a drink together (alcohol optional). More recently they had the idea of encouraging colleagues to stay healthy and get a break from the house. For every KM walked, ￡1 will be donated to a Mental Health charity and they are tracking totals on Strava as a team!

Are letters, virtual pub evenings or remote team exercise the right approach for you and your team? Maybe not.

Those are just tactics. What really matters is the end result – creating a culture in which people feel comfortable asking for help.

For instance, Mat told one of the guys on his team to take a couple of hours off one afternoon to get away from his desk and go for a nap, or just generally unwind, because he was looking pretty drained.

Things like that need to come from the top down, Mat explains. “If you just take the afternoon off to go have an afternoon nap without managerial permission, it sort of feels a bit sneaky.”

Whatever steps you take, the bottom line is that if you don't look after the mental health of your employees, you’ve got a big problem.

People are going to leave. 

The market has changed.

If you’re a candidate living in London, your market is no longer just London or the south-east. Now you can work anywhere in the world from home. So if your employer isn’t looking after you and your mental health, why would you stick around? You can happily go to an organisation that will.

What do you think? Have you struggled with attrition during the pandemic? And how have you been looking after your team’s mental health while everyone’s been out of the office? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below!

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Ben Alexander helps ambitious businesses change the world through the power of technology. He’s Co-Founder and Director of technology recruiter Tech Intellect and AmarTi, a technical consultancy. He also hosts The Insider webinar and podcast series, where he interviews some of Europe’s most influential tech leaders. And he’s even learning Python in his spare time!