Anxiety at work: what to do?
While the world is literally on fire a lot of us are still bending over backward to finalize our to-do lists that might not seem so pressing as they did a couple of weeks ago. While your job might seem a blessing to distract you, it can quickly become a huge weight on your shoulders if you refuse to recognize your anxiety.
Acknowledging what is going on and that we are only human is step one in the process of coping. Our advice? When it’s dark and you can only see one step in front of you, take it one step at a time.
In Clay’s company culture, we rely quite heavily on our relationships with colleagues, HR, and management to check in with each other. This is great, however, we wanted to lower the barrier of reaching out for support even further. We offer all of the Bricks an unbiased and neutral space through OpenUp, a mental health platform.
The goal is to empower the Bricks to take care of their mental health. This can be done through health checks, webinars, self-help programs, or by reaching out to a certified psychologist directly via phone, chat, or video. As well as offering a sympathetic ear, they're ready to help improve Bricks’ mental wellbeing from an early stage.
Bricks can ask them for support about anything: work-life balance issues, sleeping problems, heavy-heartedness, and other struggles.
With this blogpost we don’t want to show off our perks, we want to inspire other companies to see the importance of empowering employees by offering sanity breaks and professional support. Now more than ever.
For those who are working in an environment where mental health is not a top priority we have some tips to keep an eye out for those who seem lost:
Show you care. Make sure your colleagues feel comfortable coming to talk to you. Genuinely listen (put that phone away!) and leave any judgment at home. If you are a manager you can't stress enough that your peers can come to you because your door is always open (you do have to mean it though!).
Don’t sweep it under the rug. Most of the time when we notice something’s up we want to avoid awkward conversations and therefore walk away when we see that one colleague who has a dark cloud above their head. Don’t do that. Only by acknowledging that something is going on that cloud will get a little less dark and might bring some air.
Help! If you have social anxiety or have a complete loss of words, help in a more actionable way. Is there any action you can take to help your colleague out? Share the workload? Start a fundraiser? Taking action makes people feel more empowered, and it does… help.
Speak up. Whether it's your colleague, your manager (they also have feelings!), or yourself, everyone should feel that their urgency to find help is very valid. You are important, you matter and sometimes you are the one that has to make that apparent. It sucks, but you have to look out for yourself. So don’t keep silent and talk to whoever you trust.
We hope this blog post somehow helps someone to talk about the things they didn't think they could talk about in their work environment.
If you are an employer who is thinking about offering employees a listening ear, this is your sign to take action!
Clay Solutions - A SALTO Group company is the daughter company of SALTO Systems. A lock hardware manufacturer based in Oiartzun Spain. While Clay builds the cloud-based software that allows users to tap their locks open with their phone, SALTO provides the hardware, the locks that are enabled to communicate with the software. This website functions as a platform to showcase our company culture in our office in Amsterdam, the way we build our software, and why and who the Bricks are. Feel free to browse around, head over to SALTO to find more about the hardware, or apply if you see a job you think you are just perfect for.