This year, Mental Health Awareness Week has taken on added significance with employees across the UK managing months of isolation away from family, friends and colleagues during the coronavirus pandemic.

The physical distance between employees has never been greater, and working virtually means that the cues we used to get about each other’s well-being aren’t the same as they were in the office.

“Working virtually means that the cues we used to get about each other’s well-being aren’t the same as they were in the office. We’ve had to adapt, from spontaneous chats in the break room to a scheduled webcam meeting or an ad hoc chat message on Slack or Skype.

Remote work doesn’t mean we have to settle for loneliness, disconnection or shallow chit chat. If you’re a business leader or manager, your team needs you to engage them in a meaningful dialogue about the ways they’re growing and being challenged. Let the next few weeks be the weeks you experiment with new questions and sincere listening. And perhaps you’ll discover a new level of connectedness during a time when the physical distance between employees has never been greater.”

With this in mind, here are top tips from Citrix:

Ask better questions

 The problem with “how are you doing?” is it puts the burden on the respondent. They have to decide: 1) if you are sincere, 2) how much is safe to share, and 3) how much time you actually have.

To get a better answer, to demonstrate our sincerity, and to truly support employees, we can:

• Be more specific: The questions that get better answers are narrow. “How is [child’s name] doing with virtual school?” “What new routines or habits have you started in your day?” “What are you finding is the challenge you didn’t expect?”. Take 10 minutes and make a list of questions. Don’t wait until you are face to face via webcam to come up with a question.
• Share something about yourself: Trust is a product of connection, and connection is the result of vulnerability. If you’re not willing to share the highs and lows, why would anyone feel safe sharing with you? Consider opening the conversation with a story from your own life or by sharing what’s been hard for you this week, coupled with something that has brought you gratitude. Then, see what is gifted back to you. If you’re finding this hard at first, don’t give up. Building a “trust account” with a person happens one deposit at a time.
• Listen, don’t fix: Sharing honestly doesn’t mean people want you to fix it. Challenge yourself to acknowledge and validate that whatever someone is feeling is normal given the circumstances. If you’re a natural-born fixer, try this instead:
• Ask further questions: Start your sentence with any of these for decent results: Do you think that … ? What would happen if … ? Can you tell me more?
• Acknowledge and validate: An easy framework you can use to acknowledge and validate any situation is: “Given _________, it’s perfectly normal that _________. For example, “Given that you’ve had to take on so much at home, it’s perfectly normal that you’d feel exhausted.”
• Reflect back: If a person tells you something personal, like he’s concerned his spouse might lose his job and it’s weighing on him, all you actually have to do to is to reflect back what the person just told you: “The concern for what that might mean is weighing on you.”