The Hybrid Workplace: 4 Challenges for Employees in 2021

How to Manage Hybrid Workplace? Here are Hybrid Workplace Tips for Employees

In the present environment, there are more and more employees suffering from symptoms of stress, depression and anxiety due to COVID-19. The dramatic decline in employee wellbeing and mental health results from a variety of causes, such as:

• Fear of redundancy
• Lack of structure in the day
• Competing demands from home-schooling and caring responsibilities
• Social and professional isolation
• Difficulty in separating work from home life
• Overworking as a result of guilt about not being ‘at work’.

Despite these conditions prevailing for sure, there are even harder workplace health challenges that employees face in 2021. Let’s take a look at these challenges.

1. COVID-19 Anxiety

Working remotely can cause increased levels of stress and anxiety to many employees around the world. Being bombarded by frenzied updates from the news and social media, feeling anxious due to social isolation or because of worries about friends, family and those categorised as vulnerable has become normal. Thus, more and more HR managers are looking for new ways of making changes to the culture of their workplace. They are trying to create an open environment that fosters resilience, better collaboration and work-life balance in the hybrid workplace challenges faced by their employees.

1. Loneliness

Loneliness as a result of self-isolation since working from home has dramatically increased. That’s why, showing your employees that even if a hybrid workplace, they are not alone and that you care about them, and saying thank you for their courage, hard work and resilience is quite important. Showing your appreciation to your employees by offering them wellness classes or employee wellness gifts can be the best way for your team to feel valued and encouraged – and it’s simply a nice thing to do. Urban Yoga Labs’ Zen Warrior program has been designed to do exactly that – to be like a thank you note.

1. A change or lack of usual routines

For many employees, their sleeping (Click Here to learn 3 Ways for a Better Sleep), eating and wellbeing habits have been disrupted, and so now is the time to replace old habits with new ones. A company’s role in helping and encouraging its employees to build new healthy routines can be significant. Most people respond well to some form of routine. So, encouraging your employees to adopt an exercise habit as part of their daily routine can be a great way to show how much you care about their mental as well as physical health (Read our Beginner’s Guide on Habit Formation). Our Zen Warrior weekly wellness sessions have been designed to help your employees to establish a new routine and create some ‘me time’ along with promoting a healthy hybrid workplace.

1. Setting boundaries

Many employees find it difficult to separate their work life from their home life and overwork as a result of guilt about not being ‘at work’. That’s why setting limits is very important and there is a necessity for an official end to the working day. Our wellness classes help you to do exactly that: set limits.

Our classes are delivered via Zoom early in the morning and right after work in the evening. So, it will be the perfect platform for you to communicate to your employees that they are not expected to work longer hours and that their wellbeing really matters to you.

Our Zen Warrior webinars have been designed to help your employees in the hybrid workplace to:

• Increase self-awareness by using a mindfulness toolkit that will enable them to begin noticing the exact moments when they are undermining themselves.
• Avoid falling into work-habit traps like overthinking their failures. Instead, they will be encouraged to outweigh their successes and to objectively reflect on their wins.
• To focus on their goals, highlight their strengths and encourage their forward progress.

Find out more about Urban Yoga Lab upcoming events and make sure to register our workshop about:  Events Calendar & Mental Health First Aid

Written by Alexandra Kafka