By Corinna Chandler, Research Administrator in Bristol Medical School and Mental Health Champion
It’s unlikely that many of us will have found the transition to homeworking straightforward, particularly the ways in which it has changed how we interact with our colleagues day-to-day.
We no longer have those spontaneous “kitchen chats” we’re used to, or the social “check in” with colleagues at the beginning or end of a meeting, over lunch or coffee or other face-to-face events. We used to have spontaneous engagement and interesting conversations – chats about our lives and our wellbeing, not just work and productivity. If you’re in a team anything like ours, you’ve probably chatted about your pets, families, cake, TV shows and your holiday plans, to name only a few.
For those staff who have continued to work on campus since March 2020, social interactions are still likely to have changed significantly. No doubt informal encounters are few and far between, and social distancing requirements will have similarly affected the spontaneous and natural engagement enjoyed previously with colleagues.
Many of us will still have been regularly meeting with colleagues online as part of our working day, but this isn’t the same as the “chance encounters” which was virtually (if you’ll pardon the pun) removed overnight back in March last year.
Through regular contact with colleagues across the institution, the Mental Health Champions know that staff are finding this change really difficult, and they’re doing what they can locally to provide opportunities for these more meaningful and social connections to be made. You may well have a diary full of meetings already or be juggling responsibilities outside of work that mean you feel you have little time left to do anything but the “essentials” to get your job done. But we’ve got the message, loud and clear: staff are feeling increasingly isolated and are struggling to maintain that human-to-human, rather than employee-to-employee, connection.
We’ve found that setting up “virtual kitchens” or “online offices” can work in some teams, but of course they require that we all remember it’s an available option, and that we’re “allowed” to spend time here as part of our working day. Even then, there can be concerns about interrupting a colleague who’s working, speaking over one another, and the inevitable bad internet connection, so this set-up doesn’t necessarily work for creating opportunities for relaxed chatter. A huge barrier, we have realised, is that staff feel uneasy about scheduling a ‘social meeting’ during the working week, and that they will need to make up this time later to be productive.
There is a huge evidence base for the value of maintaining our social connections with others, including colleagues. Feeling close to, and valued by, other people is a fundamental human need and one that contributes to each of us functioning well in the world. Social relationships are critical to our wellbeing and act as a buffer against mental ill health for people of all ages. Sadly, we do not currently have a great deal of choice about the way that we do this. But what we want you to know is that It’s okay.
Okay to… what? In our next post, we’ll explain more.
One of the many things that I found difficult in the previous two lockdowns was a quite specific product of home schooling: having to choose between whose work meeting was more important – mine or my wife’s.
