How Does Restructuring your Business Improve the Mental Health of Remote Workers?

An effective Health & Safety strategy has many positive influences on the workplace and having a practical understanding of the subject and how to effectively integrate it is one of the most effective future-proofing exercises any organisation can undertake.

What is Health & Safety?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the term ‘health & safety’ can be defined as anything that works towards the enhancement of the physical, mental and social well-being of workers and supports the development and maintenance of their working capacity, as well as their professional and social development at work.

Naturally then, we can categorise H&S issues either as those that seek to safeguard the physical safety of employees – effectively protecting them from any potential injury, illness or stress – or those that preserve their positive mental wellbeing.

Health & safety renovation should be seen as a significant opportunity to boost employee morale, safety, productivity and most importantly, retention.

There has never been a better time to invest in mental health & safety infrastructure and as such whether it is looking into the potential in Health & Safety Tools, investing in more effective Communications Software or Restructuring Your Business, the means of refining your capacity to deal with the mental health and safety needs of a remote workforce during Covid-19 are innumerable.

 Business Restructuring 

As stated earlier, perhaps the greatest thing that COVID -19 has done for the world is that it has forced people to reassess what’s important.

This should be no different in the business world. Investing more readily in your ability to cater to the H&S needs of your employees whilst they work from home should be a priority and in the long run it may even free up capital.

For example, if a business notices that productivity and employee satisfaction are up during periods in which staff are working remotely, they can more readily analyse their capacity for change.

Could the business operate purely remotely? Could the office be exchanged for temporary working spaces available to rent as and when the business requires it? Could the finances gained in this pursuit be rerouted into counselling and additional mental health support for employees?

Conversely, staff may prefer working in the office, but this still doesn’t mean that H&S solutions for remote work should be ignored, moreover, they’ll prove invaluable when moving flexibly between office and remote work should a second lockdown rear its ugly head.

According to Gartner, when polling 317 CFOs and finance leaders, 74% said they will move at least 5% of their previously on-site workforce to permanently remote positions post-COVID 19, and nearly a quarter of respondents said they would move at least 20% to a permanent remote position.

The Advantages of Restructuring

• Increased Productivity
• Widened talent pool
• Employee retention
• More efficient corporate structure
• Improve employee satisfaction

Successfully restructuring your business may well be the key to improving the mental health of your workers as well as helping you to react swiftly to meet the evolving commercial, financial and legal objectives that coronavirus could well interrupt.

Read More: We Can’t Fix Mental Health with Duct Tape: A New Frontier in Workplace Health and Safety

To learn more, download the full report here or continue the debate at the HSE Insight Summit NA, a GDS Summit, where we bring together senior HSE executives who are actively seeking to share, learn, engage, and find the best technology solutions.

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