Mental health is the hidden epidemic in the coronavirus crisis. Studies show that first lockdown had a significant impact on wellbeing, with increasing depression, loneliness and anxiety. Even among the less affected, many people experienced periods of isolation and low morale.

As we head into a second national lockdown, this remains a major challenge for employers to overcome. By the end of October, the proportion of British adults working exclusively from home was up to 29% – the highest since the beginning of July.

On the one hand, we know that home working can be productive – even more productive in some cases than working in the office. On the other, poor mental health means lower productivity and can lead to a wide range of stress-related and physical illnesses. And managers are just as likely to suffer as anyone else. Eight in ten business leaders have reported poor mental health during the pandemic, many for the first time. One in ten reported burnout.

If anything, the new lockdown could be even more challenging than the first. It represents a disheartening step backwards for many, long after the novelty of working from home has worn off. The summer months and long, light evenings with plenty of time for exercise are also well behind us.

Keeping staff and managers feeling engaged, supported and motivated is therefore likely to be among businesses’ biggest challenges in the coming months.

Calling for improvements

We cannot, of course, entirely recreate the experiences and activities that brighten the working day and help build close-knit teams. Lunches out with colleagues, afternoon coffees and heading to the pub after work cannot be easily reproduced in the virtual world. However, we can take note of what these daily experiences represent and the functions they serve and use this to enhance the remote working experience, helping to improve engagement, job satisfaction and happiness.

The most obvious benefit that these real-world activities bring is social interaction. After all, we are social animals, and the lack of contact and communication can cause a significant strain, particularly for those living alone.

In one respect businesses are now better placed to address this challenge. A lot of firms have effective solutions in place for video conferencing, for example, as well as more experience using them than they did in March. As a result, investments in both technology and time have helped to iron out many of the teething problems when it comes to keeping workers connected and able to collaborate.

Even so, these solutions often fail to deliver the opportunities for contact that people really crave. Conversations in online calls are frequently awkward and stilted. And when groups are working together online, it often seems everyone is trying to talk at once, or no one is talking at all. The experience feels incredibly artificial.

The first thing we urgently need to do is to humanise the virtual workplace. While we’re all working from home, there’s no way we can eliminate our dependence on technology, but we can improve it. Better solutions for video calls, in particular, could help. Allowing concurrent conversations within the same call, for example, and enabling callers to set-up, join and move between fluid groups can make for more natural conversations.

Divide and conquer 

If one challenge is helping people feel connected, though, the other is empowering them to switch off.  Lunches, coffees and after-office drinks don’t just provide opportunities to socialise; they also help to structure and divide the day, providing routines and daily rhythms that we rely on. Even the daily commute can play an important function in providing a separation and transition between work and home.

All of these borders and structures help to maintain the work-life balance, but they can easily break down in the virtual environment. The atomisation of remote working means that staff often lack visibility of what their colleagues are doing or when they’re leaving the office or switching off. That can create a sense of obligation to stay online longer or into the evening. As a result, there’s a danger that employees can never really switch off, increasing the risk of stress and burnout.

Again, the answer isn’t to stop using technology; it’s to use it better. Businesses need to help staff protect the important borders between work and home. That could just mean some guidance, like pointing out the benefits of a walk or a change of scenery before and after the working day. Or it could mean creating policies that discourage video calls or emails before or after specified times. It could even involve introducing software to help workers plan or structure their days better.

Regardless of the future course of the pandemic, the experience of recent months means remote working is here to stay. Now is the time for businesses to evaluate how well it’s serving their staff and their business – and to take steps to ensure it’s working for everybody.