Mental Health and Working Remotely

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week and although working from home can have its benefits, it can also affect our mental health. Being away from colleagues and managers can make it more difficult to get support and the signs of stress may not be recognised.

A Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) survey in 2021 reported that homeworking is having an impact on people’s mental health, with 67% saying they felt less connected to their colleagues and 56% saying they found it harder to switch off. Only a third of respondents had been offered support with their mental health (34%) from their employer. To tackle the health and wellbeing issues that people are experiencing as a result of working from home, RSPH is calling for:

• Employers to ensure that all employees have access to mental health support to help them to cope with increased isolation and anxiety.
• All employees to have access to equipment and a remote assessment to support them with their physical health.
• Organisations to develop a culture that encourages employees to separate their work and home life when working from home, including encouraging employees to block their work communications outside of work hours.

What the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) say

The HSE has published advice for managing the risk of stress when working from home Managing home workers’ health and safety - Stress and mental health - HSE

• You must protect workers from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it. This applies equally to home workers as any other workers.
• Home workers will face many of the same issues as any other worker, but it can be more difficult to provide adequate support and maintain social links.
• People who are deprived of social contact through work can feel isolated or disconnected, bringing on pressure and stress or aggravating pre-existing mental health problems.

Managing the risks of stress and mental health for homeworkers

This is the HSE advice for employers for managing the risks of stress and mental health problems.

• Talk openly with them about the possibility of them becoming stressed or mentally unwell.
• Involve them in completing stress risk assessments so they can help identify potential problems and solutions.
• Keep them updated on what is happening so they feel involved and reassured.
• Have regular keep-in-touch meetings or calls so they can share any concerns.
• Make home workers aware of any occupational support available to them.
• Take account the needs of the individual – if someone is a home worker for medical reasons you may need to meet their needs differently.
• Without day-to-day contact, it is harder to recognise symptoms of stress or mental health problems so you may need to build in additional opportunities to ensure home workers are safe and well.
• You may need to review how the work is done to reduce any potential causes of stress. Talk to your workers to find out if they are facing any issues.
• Those working at home can sometimes work longer hours, making them tired and stressed. Speak regularly about workloads, demands and training needs.
• Encourage home workers to take regular breaks and use their annual leave. Make sure people aren’t working too long to meet unrealistic deadlines or feel obliged to answer emails outside normal working hours.
• Stress can build up over time and the causes can be work-related or from other issues. Whatever the cause, it’s important that any worker gets help as soon as possible, and you should support them to do so.

How we can help

Making sure adequate lone Working and supervision measures are incorporated into our online Hybrid Working and Homeworking risk assessments and this can be personalised to reflect your own company’s policies and procedures to ensure that your workers are aware of the help and support that is available to them.

Our fully managed and easy-to-use assessment program provides step by step guidance throughout the process to help your workers provide an accurate assessment of their remote working environment and wellbeing. Each individual submission is analysed by a fully trained and experienced DSE Assessor to ensure all risk including mental health concerns are highlighted and reported to the employer for further action.

Please Contact Us to see how we can build your own personalised assessment program to meet all your remote working needs.