WFH Isolation & Mental Health

As mentioned in the previous newsletter, too many people had the notion during the Pandemic (and many still hold to this) that remote means #wfh ; not #wfa . The pandemic forced us to lock down and isolate ourselves from others. I can only speak for myself that there's plenty of data (see here and here ?for a few of the many) on the negative impact being away from others had on one's mental health. I'm a major extrovert. I love meeting people. I love schmoozing. I love building relationships with people. That's what gives me the energy to get through the workday and get through life. Years ago when I worked in an office 2x a day I'd go with a colleague & friend to Starbucks. Every hour I got up from my desk to go chat with someone in the office.?

One story ?historical example that illustrates the detriment to one's mental & overall health is Rabbi Yochanan who had a study partner who he learned with daily. So close was the friendship and bond that we learn Rabbi Yochanan had 10 sons that passed away in his lifetime (no one should know of this). Yet, when his colleague passed away he was simply inconsolable. To the point, he went around calling him. Eventually going insane.

I've been #wfh for almost 11 years now. Likely the main reasons were there weren't any local co-working spaces and/or my company wasn't necessarily going to pay for it. I'm a big believer the big unlock for working remotely will be repurposing underused spaces like bars, community centers, libraries, and more. Not the post about that so will get back on topic. Over these years I've done quite a bit of mentoring startups either directly or through various accelerator programs. Because of this, I had an ever-growing list of places to work when I wanted to get out of the house. And I took advantage of this at least once every other week. Crashing at a company's office in New York, Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem to then mentor others, meet for coffees or lunches, and simply to be around other people. I loved these day trips.?

Recently I returned from an IRL trip to Berlin. The purpose was to get out of the house and meet people I've worked with virtually f2f for the first time. I can't tell you how energizing these meetings were. Even when spending half the conversation about building their startup rather than chit-chatting. Check out a few of the great photos???

These coffee meetings, lunches, and beers reinvigorated me. For the past few years, I've been struggling with anxiety, stress, and depression. Part of this mental health challenge was due to simply missing people. Missing the opportunities just to hang out with people. As I write this post I'm sitting on the bus to Tel Aviv. To get back to meeting people f2f there for the first time in 3 years. I'm excited about these coffees and lunches. I'm excited to see friends and mentees. Even if the conversation may be anchored around building startups and not shooting the breeze. Again, Jewish wisdom has taught us how important having a friend or close colleague can impact one's health.

So this is my story. Now imagine you have a startup of 25, 50, 500, or however many employees who've been facing the same challenge. They want to spend time with colleagues and friends. Talking about life and getting to know each other more deeply. To give them energy and a closer connection to the company, its mission, and its success. A recent study in the UK showed that participants agreed that the lack of contact time with their extended team (52%) and core team (55%) would affect their mental health. Even Maimonides 1000+ years ago understood that someone unhappy at work and unhappy doing their job can not be completely successful at work or fully do the job right.

It's time your company (regardless of funding status or economic turmoil) creates a policy that enables your team to access f2f interactions. If you're a VC-back startup founder you're likely not getting past my last sentence. Because your investors are on your case to cut expenses to build a successful business. But I'll let you in on a secret??? to help you build a successful company. Happy employees make happy customers as noted by Smarp whose study showed that companies with happy staff are 22% more profitable and retain 18% of their customers. Our sages also teach us that there's a difference between success (i.e. just getting the job done) and happiness (being engaged with what they're doing). The latter provides a much deeper reward for the individual and provides far more fuel to their fire.?

Cutting staff, reducing benefits, or similar may temporarily lift the ship. But what does it really do? The remaining staff is fearful whether there will be more cuts and whether they'll be next out the door. Budget cuts mean access to tools and services that would make them happier are lost. And, thus, less productive. So now the job is more difficult and less enjoyable. I won't get into companies not properly adjusting goals and targets for employees to hit to better align with the new reality. So you have a team that's worried, is less happy because the company is no longer investing in their success and engagement, and is burnt out. Do you really think you're going to win with a team like this? No freakin' way!

So what can IRLs do to help you win you're probably asking? And how can they really fit into the current economic landscape? Let's go through each type of IRL opportunity and how you can implement them to increase happiness.

Company Retreats

Your team should aim to get the entire company together once a year at a company offsite. What you do at the company retreat we'll go into in the next post. But basically, it's a vacation for your team. Meaning the entire team goes to an offsite location somewhere. If you were an in-office company pre-CoVid and a good chunk of your staff is still centrally located around one city it does not?mean flying in the rest of the people to work from the office you still probably have. Yes, you can play with the budget to make it more manageable. For example, if you'd love to get the team together for a ski retreat you don't need to do the event at Lake Tahoe or the Swiss Alps. Vermont or the country of Georgia have great skiing at a fraction of the price.?

The opportunity to have fun while together is actually a biblical commandment . Part of this idea teaches us how important it is to have fun and enjoy the time, place, and people we are sharing it with. The experience of being together and united as a family, team, and organization bring us joy. Not only at the moment while #irl but long after.?I'd like to bring an alternative view to a parable to highlight this.?

When a merchant goes to a big fair and makes many purchases, he doesn’t return home right away. He takes a few days to go through the items and pack them up safely to ensure that nothing will be lost or stolen on the wayR' Shlomo Zalman of Liadi

I'd look at this parable as follows. The merchant (or employee in our case) takes care to pack up in the form of Slack messages, pictures shared within the team, etc those items (moments of fun together) that will bring them continued joy and happiness once they've returned. Just like the item purchased at the fair provides value back home (whether to be sold in business or used to beautify one's home) those memories we come back home with will energize us moving forward. That energy and memory will bring the team closer together which deepens trust. Meaning this experience will help the team perform better than it did prior to the retreat.??

Individual IRLs/co-working

You may have employees that live close by to each other. Or if you have a team in Europe, they're only a short and cheap train or flight away from each other. So you have an opportunity to encourage and enable the team to spend the day together. Some great ways to do this are renting a workspace for the day for that group of employees. There are tons of great flex-workspace apps that will allow you to do this. You can also reimburse that group for eating lunch or dinner together. Right, we've all heard about the idea of breaking bread together. If in Europe, it could be $50 for a flight for colleagues to meet up. That's certainly a valuable investment in employee happiness. If a hotel room is cheap that is doable as well and gives that group 2 days to spend together. All at a significantly cheaper cost than getting the entire team together. But don't think that you can get away with not getting the whole team together. This is a great supplement to the yearly retreat.?

Spending the day co-working even with a single colleague can improve our mood. King Solomon understood how spending time even with a single colleague could keep our motivation and happiness up. Where if one colleague were depressed or needed some support (work or personal) their colleague can lift them up. So much so that he says woe to the person who is alone and has no one to pick them up. These individual meetup opportunities help further develop those relationships and moments created when the entire team is together. And create greater opportunities for further growth when the entire team gets together next.?

Investing in local communities

One of the ideas I'm most fascinated with around the future of work is who will own engagement in the future. In the old way of working, we spent?8-9 hours?at an office (not including commute time). Meaning we have had significantly less time to fulfill our social needs outside of work. When we’re not working, we’re either dealing with family, errands or fulfilling our personal needs. The workplace, where much of our time was spent was an ideal place and time to foster the positive connections we all need.

In the future of work where people aren't forced into a commute and get away from the fixed 9-5 schedule is that still an issue? If in the future people have more time to spend with friends and family in their local community does the focus of employee engagement and IRL interaction fall mostly on the local community or does the company still need to fully engage their team? We'll see where this all goes but I'm an advocate for companies supporting their team in getting involved in local communities. This means a lot of things but a few ideas are paying for co-working spaces or apps that offer flex space passes. You're CFO will likely be upset as they thought remote was a big win for saving money. Replacing a central HQ with a pass to local micro spaces is a step back. So it's important companies look at this as an investment, not an expense. If I know that getting out of the house to meet people for coffee makes Scott happy, it means it will also make him more productive. It will also make our customers more successful since Scott will be more driven towards company success.?

One of the most important and central ideas in Judaism is the community. So much so that generational connection to Judaism is highly dependent on the proximity to and involvement in a Jewish community. We can easily see this today where Judaism thrives the most in locations where there are deep communities with lots of engagement.?Both spiritual [synagogues, schools, etc] and physical [kosher restaurants, etc). Again, this is no surprise. When looking to create a new town or move to a new town, our Sages have given us the guidelines for the community infrastructure needed. Things like a place to pray for spiritual health, a bathhouse for physical and emotional health, charity organizations to support giving back to the community, and more. We should look the same way at local co-working spaces, startup meetups, and volunteer days. Where an employee can connect with their local community but infuse the company into the experience by wearing company SWAG for example.?

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