Teleworking and health: 7 pitfalls to avoid
2020, along with COVID-19, has been the most stressful year ever for employees, according to Oracle.
The study shows - among other things - an increase in a number of major factors:
- + 38% increase in stress ;
- + 35% more work-life imbalance;
- + 25% more depression due to a lack of social interaction;
- + 14% more loneliness.
And the acceleration in teleworking over the past year, often "forced", has a lot to do with it.
In this article, we take a look at the 7 pitfalls to avoid when teleworking in order to improve your well-being, your physical and mental health, and your performance.
Pitfall no. 1: not respecting your needs
Chinese proverb: "The Tiger also needs sleep".
In China and India, the Tiger represents royalty and symbolises the maintenance of justice. And this proverb points to the fact that everyone needs sleep, but not only...
What we're getting at is that, no matter who we are, we have vital physical and psychological needs if we are to fulfil our potential and enjoy our daily lives to the full.
Maslow put it very well with his pyramid of 5 levels of needs, and satisfying them is quite simply essential to our professional and personal balance, especially when we telework.
Our advice:
Take care of your needs by starting to identify them by sphere of life, and setting them up in "automatic watering" mode.
This "automatic watering" mode is simply a matter of setting an essential need for yourself a dedicated time slot in your week (like going for a 30-minute walk in the forest every day after lunch) and sticking to it.
If you can't stick to it, put it off, but - for whatever reason - don't cancel it! To make it easier, fill in the table below.
Pitfall no. 2: not counting your time
Working outside the workplace is not easy for everyone, and some people can even significantly increase their working time... But at what cost?
In fact, this "extra" working time takes up other time, including personal time, which is often devoted to our essential needs and our equilibrium...
If we look at the 5 categories of time, we have :
- Professional time: all activities whose purpose is to earn money in the short or long term;
- Personal time: all activities that generate pleasure without any other benefit, such as playing video games;
- Time for oneself: activities that help us to progress mentally, physically or even spiritually;
- Obligatory time: all activities that are compulsory, such as administrative tasks or household chores;
- Wasted time: all the activities that fill up our time without contribution, without being compulsory, without pleasure or displeasure, such as looking at your Facebook profile 50 times on your smartphone in 1 hour.
Our advice:
Be aware of your time and particularly the time you spend at work.
To do this, we invite you to :
- Take a sheet of paper;
- List all the moments of your past week;
- Quantify them in hours and/or minutes;
- Group them together when they recur;
- Organise them by time category according to the 5 categories seen above;
- Ask yourself: "Am I satisfied with the way my time is allocated?
If you're happy with the way your time is allocated, well done. If not, what can you do to balance your time?
Pitfall no. 3: staying in your slippers
It's true that teleworking from home allows you to cut down on commuting times and thus increase "comfort" and "productivity".comfort' and 'productivity', but often at the expense of a global scourge : lack of physical activity.
According to researcher Martine DUCLOS, scientific advisor to the French Ministry of Sport:
- Since 2012, physical inactivity has become the leading cause of avoidable death in the world, responsible for more deaths than smoking.
- According to the WHO, physical inactivity alone is responsible for 10% of deaths in Europe.
- Conversely, physical activity can significantly reduce premature mortality.
Adding 15 minutes of walking every day to your lifestyle reduces mortality by 14%, whether you are young or old, male or female, in good cardiovascular health or not, hypertensive or not, obese or not, diabetic or not.
Our advice:
Reduce the amount of time you spend in sedentary activities (e.g. time spent sitting at the office or behind screens) to gradually achieve a total sedentary time between getting up and going to bed of less than 7 h/day.
To do this, we recommend that you 'break up' the sedentary periods with breaks of at least one minute every hour or 5 to 10 minutes every 90 minutes. Breaks during which you go from sitting to standing with a physical activity considered low in terms of intensity (for example, getting up to put a book away or walking slowly).
Pitfall no. 4: snacking at all hours
Teleworking is - unfortunately - more conducive to snacking.
And nibbling all day long can take precedence over 'real meals', which can lead to weight gain. The foods eaten are generally very high in calories and don't always satisfy your hunger for several hours. This can lead to an 'endless' circle of daily nibbling because you're not satiated.
What's more, hunger is absent at the time of 'real meals' and we end up 'skipping' lunch and/or dinner. Skipping meals is also a factor in weight gain, with all the risks that entails.
Our advice: eat really balanced meals:
- Staying well hydrated with water or herbal teas;
- Eat a varied diet;
- By eating seasonal and local produce;
- By eating undenatured and, above all, unprocessed foods;
- By eating more plant-based foods than animal-based foods, and ensuring that every meal at lunch and dinner includes FULL starchy foods and vegetables;
- By eating both raw and cooked foods;
- By enjoying eating and cooking, and not hesitating to do so with friends when the opportunity arises.
Pitfall no. 5: not respecting your sleep
"Oh I'm teleworking tomorrow, I can watch Netflix for longer tonight...". Who hasn't thought and done this before?
Good physical and mental health also depends on a good night's sleep, especially as quality sleep, according to scientists, helps to :
- Prolong life;
- Strengthen memory and creativity;
- Stay slim and avoid food cravings;
- Protect against cancer and dementia (Alzheimer's, etc.);
- Reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke, not to mention diabetes;
- Be happier, less depressed and less anxious.
Our advice:
To improve the quality of your sleep, we recommend that you :
- Stop using blue screens (smartphone, computer, tablet) 1 hour before bedtime;
- Sleep in a room at around 18°C (or even lower);
- Sleep quietly and in the dark;
- Eat a low-protein dinner, rich in slow sugars, no more than 2 hours before bedtime;
- Stop drinking caffeine 6 to 8 hours before bedtime.
And if you can take a 20-minute nap after lunch, you'll be in top form!
Pitfall no. 6: forgetting to relax
Under the pretext of being at home, many of us don't allow ourselves to take time for ourselves... some of us even forget to take breaks.
And you know as well as we do that it's impossible to be happy, healthy and efficient without taking time out to relax.
No machine, no human being, is capable of living at a frenetic pace 24 hours a day. Even our planet has its moments of rest, which are none other than the seasons.
Our advice:
Relax by doing some sport, going for a walk in nature or practising Dr David O'Hare's 3.6.5 method of cardiac coherence, the benefits of which are fabulous:
- Three times a day;
- 6 inhalations, 6 exhalations;
- For 5 minutes.
To help you, the free version of the "Petit bambou" application is an easy way to start practising! You can also visit YouTube by typing in "Cardiac Coherence 365".
Pitfall no. 7: not looking after your relationships
As we saw earlier, teleworking can make you feel lonelier if you don't do something about it, especially if you live alone.
Of course, there are video meetings and conference calls, but what about the real exchanges you have with your colleagues? What about your discussions with your loved ones?
A quick look at the 'Health' aspect: Harvard launched the longest human study ever carried out - and it's still going strong as data collection continues - to answer the following question:
"What keeps us healthy and happy throughout our lives?
For over 75 years, researchers followed the lives of more than 724 men.
So what have we learned? What lessons have we learned from the tens of thousands of pieces of information gathered from these lives?
That the answer does not lie in wealth, fame, work or power.
The most obvious message from this 75-year study is that good relationships make us happier and healthier.
That's the bottom line.
Our advice:
Take the time to call, Skyper, Zoomer, WhatsApper every day at least one person outside of work that you like or at least enjoy.
In conclusion, we think that teleworking is an excellent way of improving well-being, health and, de facto, performance. provided that full remote working is kept to a minimum and that everything is properly supervised, both from the point of view of the Labour Code and from the point of view of the Human Factor within the company.
Bonus: advice for employers on protecting employee health
Our bonus tip for all employers who want to improve their employees' teleworking conditions is to draw up a teleworking well-being charter, make sure that it is read and understood by everyone and, above all, that it is applied!
Prevention is better than cure... 😁
Article translated from French