Prioritizing Mental Health In A “Remote First” Workplace: A Cybersecurity Special

"In my fifteen years of being a secruity practitoner, working on incident response and leading security teams, I saw first hand how burnout affected my team. The increased pressures of the past few years, remote work, the talent shortag, job duty frustrations, and other challenges are creating environments where mental health is wearing thing."

Eoin Hinchy - CEO & CO Founder Tines

REMOTE LEADERSHIP & MENTAL HEALTH FIRST

Does remote leadership work in business today? If so, what safety measures does management take to protect their employees? A great opportunity can be found in comprehending these important questions. Now is the time for managers to fully implement an innovative mental health engine within human resources.

"Modern Business Leadership would be successful if there were a solid alignment between remote leadership and mental-wellbeing of employees."

Steve Fahey

In fact, remote leadership is still being unpacked and designed at the factory. No one company seems to be leading at the front before COVID and certainly during its new development program for Business Performance Management. The modern employee faces a number of barriers before even beginning to feel safe at work. Although, Management at companies like Microsoft remains robust enough to manage a new remote-led workforce.

Remote Working Productivity Reports

The future of work report by Upwork found that?22.5%?of survey managers said productivity had decreased compared to?32.2%?of hiring managers that said productivity has increased since their employees started working from home in 2020.

Their performance was boosted by?22%?when employees were able to work from home a study by?Stanford found.

Source: https://www.apollotechnical.com/statistics-on-remote-workers/

Why does remote work foster productivity?

It is not rocket science to understand that working from home will result in increased productivity. Wow, what a great balance between my work and home life I have.

The fact that we can prevent becoming infected with covid on the train commute does indeed reduce our stress and anxiety.

Incorporate the additional benefit of reducing human depression levels as well - since normal work demands have previously interfered with mental health conditions.

In the sense that not all employees want to work from home, it is not all positive. During the peak of the lockdown period, home schooling, along with working at home, was a major issue. In addition, it would seem that no GP, which is another concern (shortages), would be able to handle a rash of calls from remote workers. "I can't do it anymore." comes to mind.

Accommodating Employees Remote Working Systems vs Mental Wellbeing

The systems check is often done wrong when creating a new home star trek style working environment. Although it was a good measure that used a decent budget for office desk and telecommunications - or what we call Spy home Webcam technology - companies failed the learning curve for mental wellbeing practices. Yes, some made reference to phone check-inns. OK, but it would be a mistake not to invest in home mental wellbeing practices as well.

Ultimately, remote working systems require a great deal of effort from huamam resources to align good health work practices. Essentially, the future of work will look very different than what we see today. As an example, before we even sign in on the company intranet system, we will likely need to complete a daily health assessment using Artificial Intelligence. Those are great measures for preventing high level staff turnover - during the next pandemic, and yes, there will be one.

Mental Health In Cybersecurity

I have a reason beyond the journalistic desire for information, beyond natural human empathy, to want to know more about the anxiety, burnout, depression, and stress within cybersecurity as an industry. I have been experiencing all four of these since before the pandemic hit, have considered suicide, and am now on medication for both anxiety and depression. This is a selfish desire to understand what I can do beyond keep taking the tablets, an editorial cry for help if you will, but one that might just help others as well.

From a expert persective in understanding the relationship between mental health or more efficently mental-wellbeing and emotional intelligence - emotions of any human going through a higher state of cognitive load - meaning how much working memory is processed can be complacement if a human is under stress.

Special Forces Applications & Mental Wellbeing Practices

We all know that some roles are more stressful than others. When an FBI Cybersecurity Warefare agent's marriage breaks up on the day of a major security attack, it will ultimately affect their performance. Stress and aniexty cannot be protected from all brain intrusions, but a cooling off period or health and safety briefings might suffice. I am referring to some of the principles of special forces operatives, like the British SAS, after an assignment is completed there is a debriefing.

Health and Safety Debrief and Cybersecuirty

A health and safety officer (EQ expert) would run down to the room during debriefing and assess minds on the impact of the attack. Cooling off means slowing the brain down and coming to a critical point. Moreover, cyber security teams strive to develop long-term, deeper compassionate leadership principles, and engage in self-compassionate training. An effective safeguard system to prevent a cyber attack from exploding the cognitive load system.

Sadly, even with all the current emotional intelligence research, soldiers are not protected from PTSD in advance of an operation. However, according to my own independent research, it is possible to become a super soldier through deeper EQ training. Further, this is an innovative and new way of training minds to handle the most difficult scenarios, such as a cyberattack.

Self-Awareness EQ Training and Cybersecuirty

As the threat from Cybersecurity from a positive correlation and the demand for threats rises - so must the investment in training for emotional intelligence - increasing operatives' self-awareness. To put it simply, the ability to recognize each other's emotions under the extreme pressures of working in Cybersecurity.

By introducing the concept of health and safety debriefing, the operatives will become better at managing their stress levels - thus reducing their chances of burnout. Nevertheless, more work needs to be done on each character to build defence systems based on emotional intelligence. The concept goes beyond the super-soldier concept and outlines the need to train Cyber operatives in mock test scenarios. Another excellent tool is coaching systems alliance - a study buddy work program embedded in each cyber attack for CPD.

Cyber Defenders and The Future of Mental-Wellbeing against Cyber Threats

To be blunt and use some soft terminology seen as humor in Hollywood - although it is not here - failure is not an option when, for example, EQ training to safeguard minds within the Cyber Defense industry poises a global threat again to all stakeholders. It means that if operatives are not provided the right support and training then the threat of fail play against a country's working system is heightened. Yes, emotional intelligence skills are a risk assessment strategy that must be mastered to ensure a safer future at work and in life.

I feel that my final note needs to be optimistic - to suggest that Cyber Defenders can align more with a safe mental-wellbeing program to counter Cyber Attacks - Cyber Attacks are real - but, so is the human capacity to block and deal with those attacks.