Staying Productive During the Lockdown With Dr Sarah Jane Cullinane

The Work Well Podcast focuses on creating and improving healthy workplaces. Why should we be in a role or an environment that doesn't support our health and wellbeing? Even more, in today's context, it is more important than ever to focus on our physical and mental health while working remotely during the isolation period.

The guest of today's episode is Dr. Sarah-Jane Cullinane, assistant professor at the Trinity Business School with ten years of experience teaching and researching in the areas of HR, organisational behaviour, and well being at work. She has a PhD in organisational behaviour, focusing on wellbeing and job design and a diploma in teaching mindfulness-based interventions. Sarah-Jane and I share a passion for organisational wellbeing, having worked together on training programmes on this subject, and most recently we co-designed the Postgraduate Certificate in Workplace Wellness, at Tangent in Trinity College Dublin.

Our discussion in this episode focused on the current challenges individuals are facing while working from home and ways they can cope and adapt to the situation.

New Focus on Workplace Wellbeing at Trinity College Dublin

Sarah-Jane introduced modules on workplace wellbeing to her Masters and Undergraduate students at the Trinity Business School last year teaching students how to look after themselves and how to support wellbeing in their future working environments. The response to the modules has been interesting. The students are studying business, and some have found it hard to see the relevance of personal wellness in the business context.

The Postgraduate Certificate in Workplace Wellness which commenced in February of this year at Tangent, Trinity’s Ideas Workspace, is a different story. This programme is specifically for people who are working or who will work in the area and who have elected to join the programme, whereas the modules in the Business School were a compulsory part of the general business degree.

The purpose of these programmes is to emphasise the way people's health impacts the way they work and study, which then carries on into how businesses run. Businesses are a product of how healthy and well their staff are. While the modules focused on individual well-being, the Tangent programme goes a lot deeper into the fundamentals of workplace wellness and organisational culture.

Working from home: how to focus on your well-being during this period of uncertainty

It might sound redundant, but it's very important to eat well and stay active, Sarah-Jane says. Our bodies need movement; it can be any kind of movement like gardening, yoga, going for a short walk outside, stretching, etc. She also mentions the importance of having a routine.

"It's really important for our brains to have routine and some level of predictability; it doesn't mean you have to plan every second of the day but that you at least have some structure on the day [...] It can be flexible and fluid, but it needs some kind of a template." And also, never forget to schedule nourishing activities and time for yourself during this daily routine. It's so easy to just do your work and watch the news all day.

"Even if you just go to your balcony, not everybody has a garden [...], but everybody hopefully has access to some fresh air. And even just to step outside, regularly so that your eyes can take in nature and that your senses can take in nature, because our houses are very manufactured environments, and that has quite a strong impact on our brain and our mood. There's years of evidence to support that."

We are all going through a lot of intense emotions and we should acknowledge that

Another very important aspect Sarah-Jane points out is the importance of giving ourselves space to feel what we're feeling. This is a time filled with intense emotions: "Fear is very natural, it's very appropriate, and it's very intelligent. And when we feel fearful about something, it's usually right. [...] There's an actual danger to our lives, our health, the health of our loved ones, it's real, it's not imagined. [...] But it can be really harmful and it can cause us a lot of suffering if we don't recognise it when it's there and allow it to be there a little just for a time. I think that's what a lot of people are struggling with, they're pushing through the fear."

It's important for people who are working from home to take time during the day to think about how they are feeling. Sometimes people might find themselves completely overwhelmed and that is when they are outside their window of tolerance. This can happen for several reasons, like losing a job or being confined with family in a small space. In this situation, "Sometimes we have to do things to calm down our central nervous system, which can be things like, exercise, just moving the body and doing some deep breathing, actual physiological things to calm back down and then say, okay, what's here for me right now? Can I allow that to be here and practice mindfulness?"

How can employers support their employees during this time and beyond

Working remotely has most people, including managers, at home with their families and pets around. They will have domestic duties to attend to and work schedules that need to be adjusted to children's needs. Employers should take the first step and show that "it's okay, and it's normal to have a bit of life going on in the background in that quiet corner of the house. [...] I think that that really puts people at ease" Sarah-Jane says.

The remote working situation can be more difficult for people that are used to the human interaction an office space provides. This can be worked on if the employers are open to using technology to help people connect and keep those morning coffee talks alive. "It's important to have check-ins with people that you can be a bit vulnerable with as well, and employers might need to help people as well to do that. You can come up with buddy systems or small groups that have once a week meetings."

An honest conversation with your employees can be exactly what they need right now

Try to avoid email as the only form of communication with your employees and rather start an honest conversation. A conversation about workload with one's team can put a lot of people at ease and have them working more productively. This is a stressful time and employees are very prone to burn out very quickly if they find themselves caught in irrelevant and time-consuming tasks.

During this time people working from home will have time to reflect on their previous working situation, on what slowing down during this lockdown feels like and on what they want their careers to look like after this. This allows employers to explore how they can work differently in the future. Because "when you trust people to work in a way that they want to work, and if they wish to do so, people are certainly very productive and creative." Sarah-Jane says.

Now is the time for employers to open a conversation, ask their employees for suggestions because things will never be the same again after this pandemic. They need to be prepared for that.

To sum up the conversation, our guest concluded: "What a fantastic experiment, a social experiment where almost everybody is working remotely now, potentially being as productive as possible, if not more. We'll find out soon. I'm sure it'll be some interesting studies and data once this is all over. [...] Again we wish this hadn't happened but there's going to be a lot of positives that come out of this and I think that's a nice way to finish up."

Sarah-Jane's positive outlook on the current situation and the future of the working environment is quite inspirational.

Listen to the entire podcast here. Watch the full video of our conversation here. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Sarah-Jane Cullinane.

Want to learn more about Dr. Sarah-Jane Cullinane's work? Go to www.theplacetobe.ie or reach out to her on LinkedIn.