Remote Work Stress Management: A Silicon Wristwatch to Rescue

The Covid-19 pandemic instigated a shift in the workplace and normalized remote work. Maintaining employee relations have always been a tough spot and remote work scenario has increased the level of difficulty in achieving the same. The work-from-home milieu has escalated the stress and workload among the employees and hence, tracking their mental well-being and health is a necessary step towards building better employee relations and engagement.

Many organizations have been using wearables to track the health, working conditions, and safety of the employees. These wearables collect data and send critical information to the employer through an app or other reviewing methods. Wearables are a great source to understand flaws in an organization and its communication with the employees. 

Moodbeam is such a wearable device that enables employees to record their emotional well-being. This helps employers to understand what their employees are going through and how can they improve the situation. 

A ‘Happy or Not’ Wristwatch

Moodbeam One is a silicon wristwatch with a blue and yellow button. A person can press the yellow button if they are happy and blue if they are sad. Along with logging the mood of a person, Moodbeam can track sleep and activity with wireless connectivity. 

Moodbeam took birth in the brains of Christina Colmer McHugh and Jonathan Elvidge from Hull, England. Christina Colmer McHugh, Co-Founder, Moodbeam says in a BBC report, “Businesses are trying to get on top of staying connected with staff working from home. Here they can ask 500 members: 'You ok?' without picking up the phone.”

The Moodbeam app collects the data logged into the wearable and presents comprehensible insights to the users. This enables employers to visualize the moods of their employees without directly communicating with them. Moodbeam can successfully overcome the communication gap organizations face during remote working. There are many other solutions offered to track the mental health of employees like the Modern Health app. It is an accessible platform for employees that offers professional support like therapy to the users. 

Is This a Right Solution? 

While tracking health is not looked down with concern, recording a person’s mood, stress levels, and frustration might sound like interfering in personal space. Often people might demand anonymity while logging in to such sensitive data. However, Moodbeam users expressed a different call. While speaking to BBC, Christina says, “we moved away from anonymous to identifiable data after trials found that people do want to be identified.” 

Deteriorating mental health among employees during Covid-19 is an important issue that needs to be addressed. According to a survey by Employment Hero, 25% of all employees want a mental health support focus from HR. 

Remote work or not, the mental health of employees is crucial and employers and HR sectors should try to focus on this. This scenario will help the companies to establish better employee relations and satisfaction, enhance workplace engagement, and help identify stressful strategies and improve them.