Staying healthy in the wake of covid-19

Protecting and supporting our people remains a priority at Direct Line Group. During these unprecedented times, as a company we have worked day and night to keep our people safe while still being able to look after our customers. 

It’s important for the national interest that people continue to stay at home and by the 19^th March, the large majority of our 11,000 people were working from home and they continue to do so. This was a huge undertaking, but it was very important to pull together as a team to deliver for our people as well as our customers and their changing needs.

While we don’t know exactly when the nation’s lockdown will end, we now need to think about what this new way of working means for our mental health and wellbeing.

With this in mind, we’ve pulled together some tips to help with adjusting to the new routine:

1. Try and keep some form of routine. Get up normal time and get dressed as you would normally do before work. Sitting around your home in your PJs may seem like a dream come true at first, but you’ll quickly begin to feel socially disconnecting from the world.
2. Try and make a dedicated space for you to work. It needs to feel different to where you sit/reside when not working. It's important to keep that separation in your own mind, otherwise you can easily fall into a trap of always feeling like you're at work. If you can, avoid working from your bedroom to keep your room a relaxing place where you can switch off and sleep easy.
3. A good technique to help you switch on and off is to maintain a ‘commute’ – so you could get up in the morning, get showered, dressed, and then go for a walk around the block for five minutes. It gets you into a different place mentally and will make it easier to start your work day. Do the same at the end of the day as well as this can help you switch off the work-mode button in your mind.
4. 4. Although social gatherings are being discouraged by the Government now, it's vital to have human contact – especially for those living alone. Use Skype, Facetime and other products to catch up with friends and see people’s faces – it’s important to continue to connect with people.
5. Eat well – It's very easy when your kitchen is just there to grab a snack at any point. Try to find a way to resist that temptation and stick to your normal, healthy diet.
6. Go for a walk and soak up some sunshine or fresh air. In winter some people suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which will get worse if you never leave your house. Being inside all day will also reduce your levels of Vitamin D and that will negatively affect your immune system.
7. If you're working on something particularly uninspiring, it can be easy to be distracted throughout the day. Eventually this will lead to more acute mental health issues as you'll feel guilty for not achieving what you normally would and you may feel you have to work late to catch up on the work you’ve missed. If you're a regular user of social media, and you find that gets worse when working from home, there are useful applications that block the main social media sites for certain hours of the day which can help you stay focused.

Mind in England  partners with Direct Line Group and has a lot of information on its website about wellbeing in the current climate. To find out about this in more detail click here.