The past five months have been a whirlwind.
COVID coming.
Clients leaving.
Team members leaving.
New clients coming.
Rearranging responsibilities to make the workload work.
Steady optimism.
Steady productivity.
Steady Zooms.
Steady exhaustion.
My team and I are working so hard, grateful for the work, thrilled to be evolving in this challenging time, delighted to shepherd our clients through these unknown waters. And emotionally spent.
But we have a solve that has brought us all so much joy: Mental Health Days.
Each month, each team member is assigned a Mental Health Day by our COO, Aleni. A day off from work, a day with no meetings or work commitments, to be spent as she chooses. We’ve been doing this since May and it is a miracle!
I didn’t come up with this idea myself. Becca, our Director of Social Media, scheduled herself a day off at the end of April and said it was the best most effective reboot. I was so jealous. I wanted one too. And if I NEEDED one, so did the rest of my team. So from that point forward our Mental Health Day program was born.
With the MHD assignments, we make sure to respect the redundancies on our small team, so that the work progresses just fine and doesn’t get held up.
It’s a small gift of serenity in a very busy sea.
And as COVID continues to upend our schedules by keeping kids home from school, I’ve extended our Summer half-day Fridays into the Fall, because we all need more Summer.
Will you try this with your team?