Never before has mental health and wellbeing been more centre stage for businesses than it is right now. We're working from home more, self-isolating, social distancing, balancing family responsibilities, and physically far away from loved ones. This impacts us all in different ways. There are many things that firms can do during this time, and at DWF, we continually aim to support the wellbeing of our people and be versatile to the ever-changing landscape we are now operating in. 

The Power of Information

Keeping your staff informed about what is going on helps to create more certainty during these uncertain times. Over the past three weeks at DWF, our Group CEO has personally sent daily global emails to our people, providing a factual overview of how the business is responding in this climate. They offer a personal touch in this now very virtual world and help to signpost colleagues to support, ranging from IT, how teams are creatively keeping in touch with clients, wellbeing guidance and reassurance. The homepage of our intranet has been transformed into a hub of IT guides, working from home resources, wellbeing support and blogs from our colleagues about how they are adapting to this new world across our global network. We also recognise that our people can feel overloaded with information during this time and have encouraged staff to take regular breaks from the news and social media and only look to reputable sources on the outbreak and its effects. 

Be there

The most important thing is to be there for your people and let them know where they can go to talk to someone if they are feeling stressed, anxious or confused by the current situation. Whether that's our CEO, their line manager, their team or our employee assistance programme with its confidential helpline and counselling service. We are reminding our people to keep connected with colleagues, family and friends via email, social media, video conference or telephone – whatever works best for them. We have provided a series of webinars to help our people to identify and acknowledge the emotions they may be experiencing. We have also compiled a dedicated list of recommended resources on mental health, mindfulness, meditation, working from home as a remote team and physical wellbeing exercises such as HITT, yoga and dance. 

Positivo Change

There are already many examples of how this pandemic can change lives for the better. In essence, we are all working hard to ensure we fully utilise our time, have focussed conference calls, flexible start and finish times and more mindful delegation of work, which are principles of the Mindful Business Charter that we adopted last year. The Charter is a collaboration between leading banks, law firms and other businesses committed to driving change in how we work to reduce avoidable stress. The current situation and the Charter have enabled us to talk to our people about what stress might look like during this time and the importance of focusing on the present and what's within our colleague's control. The outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent measures that are keeping people safe will undoubtedly have a positive impact on flexible working in the future. In the aftermath, businesses should continue to support their people to thrive working flexibly and not just survive. For DWF, we have seen our colleagues telling their working from home stories, sharing how they are bonding with their fellow team members and generally raising spirits across the business. For a global business, it has turned out to be a great leveller, given us common ground and united us all so that when we do return to 'normality' (whatever that may look like), we do so better together.