WorkLife Wellbeing

1. You Set the Tone. As a leader on campus, your behavior and attitude significantly influence the work culture and the well-being of your team members. When you prioritize your own self-care, you set a positive example, fostering a culture of well-being throughout the organization.
2. Manage Stress. Become more mindful, compassionate, and happier. helping you stay positive, be available to others, and enjoy life more. When you engage in self-care activities helps managers reduce stress, enhance resilience, and maintain a clear and focused mindset. 
3. Improve WorkLife Wellbeing. Managers may struggle to strike a balance between their personal and professional lives. Prioritizing self-care allows leaders to rejuvenate, recharge, and prevent burnout. By setting aside dedicated time for personal activities, hobbies, and spending quality time with family and friends, managers can achieve a greater sense of well-being, which ultimately leads to greater satisfaction, increased productivity, and a higher quality of life.
4. Enhanced Emotional Intelligence. By engaging in practices that promote emotional well-being, managers can develop a better understanding of their own emotions and reactions, allowing them to regulate their responses and communicate more effectively with their team members. By demonstrating empathy and emotional intelligence, managers can build stronger relationships, improve teamwork, and foster a supportive work environment. 
5. Increased Productivity and Performance. Managers who practice self-care tend to be more focused, energetic, and productive. Regular exercise, adequate sleep, and healthy eating habits contribute to improved cognitive function, creativity, and problem-solving skills. Engaging in activities that bring joy and relaxation, such as reading, listening to music, or spending time in nature, can rejuvenate the mind and enhance productivity. Furthermore, taking regular breaks and utilizing time-management techniques, can help leaders maintain focus and optimize their productivity throughout the workday, regulating your energy levels and build resilience.

1. Prioritize Physical Well-being: Build a rest routine. This starts with setting up a realistic, consistent sleep schedule. Make time for short, re-energizing 20-minute breaks for rest can reignite dwindling energy levels in the latter half of the workday. Engaging in regular exercise, eating well, and adequate hydration, not only improves physical health but also has numerous mental and emotional benefits.
2. Foster Mental Wellness: Incorporating mindfulness practices into your daily routine cultivates mental well-being. These practices can help calm the mind, reduce stress, and improve focus and clarity. Allocate time for activities such as meditation, deep breathing exercises, or guided relaxation. Reading, solving puzzles, and learning new skills, can also contribute to mental well-being.
3. Cultivate Emotional Resilience: Being open with your emotions, sharing your vulnerability, and showing your team what self-care looks like are powerful leadership qualities. Building a strong support network can enhance emotional intelligence and resilience. Seek out mentors or coaches who can provide valuable insights and help you navigate difficult situations. Connect with trusted friends, family, or colleagues who can provide a listening ear and offer guidance during challenging times. Practice self-reflection and journaling to gain greater understanding of your emotions, thoughts, and patterns of behavior. 
4. Set Boundaries and Delegate: Recognizing your limitations and setting clear boundaries can help to avoid burnout for yourself and your team. Delegate tasks to capable team members, empowering them to test out new skills, and alleviating your workload. Establish, and clearly communicate, designated periods of time for rest, relaxation, and personal activities, and honor those boundaries as much as possible.
5. Continuous Learning and Development: Investing in your professional growth and development not only expands your knowledge and skills but also enhances your confidence and effectiveness as a leader. Take advantage of resources and networks that can help you stay updated on industry trends and best practices.

Managers

• Be a “connector.” Give targeted feedback in their own areas of expertise or “connect” employees with others on the team or elsewhere in the organization who are better suited to the task. Remote workers who might not know their peers as well as their office-going counterparts will find this technique extremely valuable.
• Keep remote employees in the loop on team communications.
• Regularly highlight remote workers’ positives and successes. 

Team Members

• Ensure team members connect regularly (both formally and informally).
• Encourage everyone on the team to know each other’s areas of expertise and who they can reach out to for advice... work-related or otherwise.

Peers

• Encourage peers to set up informal conversations with remote workers they don’t know (or) those on other teams.
• Consider giving small projects to teams of two and step back to see what they produce together while you provide advice but not control.

1. Practice empathy in your check-ins with employees and pay attention to their tone of voice, facial expressions, and context to gauge how the employees are feeling as they speak.
2. Focus on other signs such as reduced participation in team meetings, resistance to adapt to process change, procrastination, and understanding an individual’s state of mind. Look for disconnection.
3. Avoid making assumptions, jumping to conclusions, or changing the subject, when an employee voices a concern.

1. Provide information and support from the Academic & Staff Assistance Program (ASAP). 
2. Consider mental health just as relevant as, and a component of, physical health.
3. Check for any personal biases you may have.
4. Recommended Reading:
   1. Gallup: Why Leaders Must Address the Employee Well-being Deficit
   2. APA’s 2022 Work and Well-being Survey results: Workers appreciate and seek mental health support in the workplace

1. Have conversations about successfully meeting the needs of the operation while simultaneously supporting the needs of employees.

2. Consider that consistently high-performers may possess the time-management and strategizing skills to optimize their own work and workflows and provide them the freedom so they can choose how to best succeed. Autonomy is a powerful motivator, and flex-place can be optimized when paired with flex-time.

3. Clarify to employees when they are and are not expected to be working or available. This allows for decompression.

4. Clarify communication methods and expectations. Setting Expectations

5. Avoid micro-management and “raising the bar” of expectations, making sure they are on-par with non-remote work expectations.

6. Model work-life boundary setting and culture through behaviors and actions.

   •  Zoom Fatigue and How to Prevent It, Psychology Today

   • Nonverbal Overload, Technology, Mind, and Behavior: APA Open

   • Staying Mindful When You’re Are Working From Home, Harvard Business Review

   • Utilize Vacation, Harvard Business Review Article

   • Take breaks throughout the day and avoid communications during "off-work" time whenever possible.

   • Encourage taking vacation days in both scheduled and as needed ways. Visit the “Plan Your Vacation Days” Toolkit for team activities and resources. 

• Organizational culture should support managers in keeping team activities alive, such as celebrating birthdays, work anniversaries and farewells, as well as hosting team engagement/creativity events.
• Create opportunities for informal interactions among remote employees by providing them with platforms for setting up virtual breakout spaces which can help maintain the social connection among otherwise isolated employees.
• If possible, establish regular in-person meetings where all team members are physically in the same room. For example, have one of the four regular weekly team meetings each month at a physical site or with a primarily remote team, a quarterly meeting.
• Encourage peer learning as it can be another great channel to sustain social interactions among remote workforce.
• If possible, encourage one-on-one work between different team members and step aside only offering advice and feedback. This builds relationships between team members and encourages creativity.
• Encourage healthy behaviors, bodies and minds.