Workplace Wellbeing Goes Beyond Physical Health

Social and psychological recommendations for how to care for office employees in a post-COVID world.

As America “returns to work,” employers with office buildings are figuring out the right way to transition back to in-person interactions after months of physical distancing due to COVID-19.

The conversation centers on reducing one’s exposure to coronavirus particles in respiratory droplets and aerosols. Thus, our planning is largely focused on re-arranging desks and furniture to lower the concentration of risk.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a set of guidelines to American employers on reopening their office buildings to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Most of the guidelines focus on interventions to physical space, with only some behavioral or operational recommendations. The guidelines codify what has become somewhat of a national mantra during this global pandemic: stay six feet apart, wash your hands, cover your face. But what toll might these physical interventions take on the human psyche?

Those of us that are accustomed to working in an office setting are faced with a contradiction: we need to interact with people to create a sense of shared purpose, meaning and value, and yet, we also need to actively avoid interacting with each other to protect our physical health.

The relationship between our physical and social-emotional health has become complicated and needs to be re-examined, with a lens not just on physical design interventions but also on cultural norms and social etiquette.

This piece explores the potential impact of public health measures on our social and psychological wellbeing, and includes recommendations on how to deal with four inherent tensions, from the personal to the organizational, that may arise in an office building setting.

Tension 1: Responsibility vs. Anxiety

With the deluge of official government guidance to manage our personal behaviors, like hand washing, social distancing, avoiding sick people, disinfecting surfaces, and using hand sanitizer, some folks are finding it even more difficult to cope with their anxious feelings.

Anxiety disorders were already the most common mental illnesses in the U.S. before the pandemic, affecting 18.1% of the population every year, according to the ADAA. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is less common, but still affects 2.2 million adults, or 1.0% of the U.S. population.

The pandemic is adding to the stress of an already anxious population. The number of Americans who Googled information about panic and anxiety attacks reached a 16-year high between mid-March and mid-May, when coronavirus began spreading across the U.S., according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). And a recent CDC survey of around 5,400 adults in late June also found that the prevalence of anxiety symptoms was three times higher this summer than it was in the second quarter of 2019.

One silver lining? We’re all being given the same hand-washing instructions, so there’s no need to feel like an outcast, suffering in silence. Those anxious feelings that were once considered taboo or ignored, can now be viewed as a shared and normalized experience. Not only that, but we can reframe our personal anxiety as a reaction to collective responsibility (“we’re in this together”), not just a symptom of individual pathology (“there’s something wrong with me.”)

Employers can also use this as an opportunity to review their formal benefits policies. One place to start would be to audit Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) to make sure they offer adequate counseling and can make referrals to local practitioners that provide professional treatment and care. Informally, employers should review ways in which their workforce can connect through virtual and remote-first activities for more social support.

As we return to our office buildings, armed with soap and sanitizer, let’s also arm each other with the mental health resources to help quell our anxiety, now that we’re all in a hyper-vigilant mode together.

Tension 2: Acceptance vs. Judgment

In the age of coronavirus, face masks have become ubiquitous, and according to the CDC, a recommended part of our workplace dress code.

Some people fear that covering our nose and mouth will impede interpersonal communication. As we know, body language and facial cues can tell us a lot about what someone is really trying to communicate. In an attempt to make it easier to read each other’s expressions while keeping our potentially infectious respiratory droplets at bay, one company created The ClearMask™, the first fully transparent face mask. The mask is currently available for use in hospitals and by healthcare providers. The company says it aims to “bring a human element” to mask wearers.

Turns out, according to one study, observing the area just around the eyes is usually enough for humans to recognize someone else’s feelings (except for the feelings of fear or surprise, which rely more on the mouth.) Our fears of face masks hindering communications might be overblown.

However, what actually might erode interpersonal connection even more than not being able to see facial cues is how we judge face mask wearers, in general.

“If you’re someone who thinks that the current protective measures go too far, a person with a mask may appear gullible, if not downright foolish,” says facial expression and emotion researcher Ursula Hess in an interview with Scientific American. “On the other hand, if you are a devoted mask wearer, you will probably be more sympathetic to the other person.”

What’s a productive way to think about adapting to this new office accessory? I like what Hess recommends: “If we see a face covering as an expression of mutual consideration for others, it can bring us all together.”

Similar to hand-washing, mask-wearing is not something to judge or besmirch, but rather, to accept and encourage. If it is established as company practice, there is no need to single out anyone’s individual choice to wear one. It is another way of taking care of one another. What’s more, it could be a fun opportunity to celebrate individuality (“let’s each bring our own unique face mask”), or to symbolize solidarity (“let’s all get matching face masks.”)

Tension 3: Inclusion vs. Stigmatization

Humans are resilient, adaptable beings. But we are also highly social and sensitive to each other’s dynamics. How we treat others — and how they treat us — affects our quality of life.

What shame or stigma will people feel when they are “immediately separated from others” at the first sign of sickness? In the case of CDC’s guidelines, we are actively encouraged to shun people who have symptoms of coronavirus, which includes even a headache.

Stigmatization can also occur against workers who make the personal choice not to return to the office, perhaps going against the grain of their co-workers who feel more comfortable in the workplace. It’s important to remember that it takes courage to set personal boundaries, whether to protect your own health or others.

Unfortunately, the fear of contracting coronavirus has led us to bypass our human instincts to connect and embrace each other, and instead, increase a sense of social stigmatization, which is the disapproval of (or discrimination against) someone based on perceived characteristics. To be clear, stigma is a natural human evolutionary response — we distance ourselves from people who could infect or harm us. But this comes with a high social-emotional cost.

Prof. Valerie Earnshaw writes about it in her article, “Don’t Let Fear of Covid-19 Turn into Stigma,” for the Harvard Business Review:

“My decades of research show that stigma harms the mental and physical health of people with disease. This stigma can take the forms of social rejection, gossip, physical violence, and denial of services. Experiencing stigma from others can lead to elevated depressive symptoms, stress, and substance use. Alarmingly, people don’t have to experience stigma from others to be negatively affected by it. Just anticipating stigma from other people — perhaps because you’ve already seen sick people be ostracized or judged for their illness — can lead to anxiety and stress.”

Dealing with social stigma is not just detrimental to personal wellbeing, but it also poses a systemic challenge, making it harder for us all to fight infectious diseases worldwide. During the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, for example, stigma and misinformation were among key factors that prevented people from getting tested, which made the health crisis worse.

Furthermore, social shunning during the coronavirus era could exacerbate America’s existing crisis of widespread social isolation. A Cigna study from 2018 — long before coronavirus disrupted our social relationships — found that nearly half (47%) of U.S. adults report sometimes or always feeling left out.

Our task as office workers is to figure out how to make people feel included, even if they’re asked to physically leave the workplace. Prof. Earnshaw outlines a few suggestions:

• clarify organizational values of inclusion, acceptance, and diversity
• enforce anti-discrimination policies
• create clear and confidential guidelines for reporting and responding to Covid-19 cases among employees
• invest in wellness programs and mindfulness activities

Educating ourselves on nuanced and sensitive language helps, too. For example, “we can stop using terms such as ‘infected’ and ‘carrier’ and switch to ‘affected’ or ‘acquired,’” writes one doctor. “This reminds people that patients and those at risk are people just like us.”

The coronavirus health crisis reminds us that fostering diversity and inclusion goes beyond accounting for things like race, gender, age, or disability, but now also, health.

Tension 4: Interdependency vs. Loneliness

What happens to a sense of community when office workers are asked to avoid each other?

CDC guidelines suggest replacing high-touch communal items (think: water cooler) with alternatives, such as pre-packaged, single-serving items. We should minimize close contact with others on our commute to and from work. And we should spend less time together overall, by staggering our shifts and breaks.

By reducing chances for casual, spontaneous communal gatherings, we are eroding chances of real friendships being formed.

Friends at work are important. Research from Gallup has shown a link between having a best friend at work and the amount of effort employees expend in their job. For example, women who strongly agree they have a best friend at work are more than twice as likely to be engaged (63%) compared with the women who say otherwise (29%)

Even before the COVID-19 crisis, experts warned that loneliness is a growing health epidemic. Three in five Americans consider themselves lonely, according to Cigna’s 2020 Loneliness Index. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recognizes that social isolation and lack of social support are associated with a host of negative health consequences, including greater risk of cardiovascular disease, compromised immunity, increased risk of depression and a shortened lifespan

Companies with a long history of working remotely, like Basecamp, which even wrote a book about it, have many tips for fostering social interaction in a distributed workforce. Basecamp suggests investing more heavily in social interactions with friends and family outside of the office, and taking little breaks throughout the workday. But for those employers that haven’t yet adjusted to virtual collaboration, it can be a daunting shift, since there are very real consequences for workplace wellbeing, employee engagement and business performance.

Loneliness can impair productivity, stifle creativity, and hinder decision-making. It means employers will have to bear the cost of missed days due to illness or stress, lower quality of work, and higher risk of turnover.

To combat this crisis of social isolation, office employers collaborating in a distanced or remote setting will have to work extra hard to facilitate ways for coworkers to form meaningful connections. There are myriad examples of fun social or “extracurricular” activities that employees can engage in virtually. Our recent time in quarantine together has proven the effectiveness of things like live-streamed fitness classes, group meditations over Zoom, and online trivia contests.

But Zoom hangouts can only do so much. To make a real difference, leaders need to value interpersonal relationships that go beyond performing a job function. This means getting to know your teammates on a more personal level; hiring people based on their unique communication styles, values, and interests, not just their skills and expertise; checking in on colleagues who appear to be struggling; and promoting interpersonal trust by keeping people’s personal business private. (Research has found that telling colleagues about feeling lonely can actually make things worse by highlighting a sense of dissatisfaction with their relationships.)

Bottom line? Take care of your employees, so you can take care of business.

Caring for a Community

The CDC’s mission is to save lives and protect people from health threats. Its recent office building guidelines for employers are in service of this mission.

As citizens, we should interrogate what “health” means to our communities. Let’s consider that physical health is not the only thing being threatened, but rather, it is our mental, emotional, and social health, too.

As office workers with the privilege of even returning to work during an economic and public health crisis within the context of great social unrest, it’s the least we can do to take care of each other.