By Corinna Chandler, Research Administrator in Bristol Medical School and Mental Health Champion

The difference a year makes, hey?

During a catch-up in the latter part of 2020, the Mental Health Champions were reflecting on how our working days had changed over the past 12 months. More than anything else, it highlighted how our time spent in social interactions had changed. We don’t simply mean the time spent with colleagues in meetings, but connecting with them on a human level – the small talk, spontaneous chat, the discussions of your most recently watched Netflix series. 

Ultimately we realised that, for many of us, screen time is at an all-time high, and social interaction at an all-time low.  

For the data-hungry, we asked some staff to give us a couple of before-and-after snapshots showing how their working day has changed.

Emily (academic)	26 November 2019	25 November 2020
Face-to-face interactions	40 students, 30+ staff	1 (my partner, also WFH)
Screen time	3 hrs 15 mins	7 hrs 45 mins
Conflicting meetings	0	3
Lunch break	45 mins	None (ate at desk during webinar)
Other breaks	1 (30 mins)	1 (45 mins coffee/walk breaks)

Molly (Prof Services)	January 2020	January 2021
Face-to-face interactions	20+ staff (open-plan office)	1-2 weekly
Screen time	5-6 hours daily	7-8 hrs daily
Lunch break	1 hr (inc short walk)	1 hr (occasionally inc short walk)
Other breaks	Various inc walking to meetings	Infrequent, short (drinks/snacks)

Louisa (academic)	27 November 2019	26 November 2020
Face-to-face interactions	100+ students, 30+ staff	1 (my husband, also WFH)
Screen time	Limited	4 hrs
Lunch break	1 hr (inc walk w colleague)	30 mins (inc exercise w dog in garden)
Other breaks	2 x 10 mins	1 comfort break, 1 5-min Skype chat

Regardless of your work area – academic, Professional Services, campus, technical – I’m sure there are ways in which the interactions that contribute to your working day have changed. It was these changes in our collective experiences that formed the foundations of the message that we wanted to spread. 

Social interaction is one part of what we can do to stay well, but there are lots of other ways that you can reclaim your time. Staff will be sharing their own experiences and examples in future posts, coming soon.  

 

By Corinna Chandler, Research Administrator in Bristol Medical School and Mental Health Champion

The University’s senior team are actively encouraging staff to find ways to support their wellbeing, and to connect with others in a meaningful way as part of this. For starters, you could try some of the following:

• Book meetings/appointments for less than the default suggested diary times of 30 minutes/1 hour etc. For example, a 30-minute meeting would become 25 minutes, 1 hour would be 50 minutes, etc. The remainder can be used to discuss non-work topics, or to give each other a break between meetings.
• Meet with colleagues online or in person (observing current COVID-19 guidelines, of course) to talk about non-work topics. You shouldn’t feel that you need to “make up the time” for this.
• Use a screen break or a coffee or lunch break to call a friend or family member.
• Join or set up an interest group to meet with colleagues online to discuss books/films/crafts/quizzing etc (see “Sir Craftalot” Yammer group or the Newbsletter).
• “Work alongside” a colleague or friend in an online environment, for example by setting up a Teams meeting in the background.

Ultimately, we want staff to feel empowered to reclaim some time during the working week to reconnect – with their colleagues, or friends and family, and take time away from their screens or regular screen work. The way we work has changed dramatically; we need to think about how we can use the technology available to us to make changes – even small ones – to how we deal with the current situation. Staff need to feel that they can actively address their need to connect with others.

In the next post, we ask staff to look at how their daily social interactions have changed since March 2020.

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.