How to Foster Well-Being in Remote Work
With all its flexibility and freedom, remote work can hide significant emotional pitfalls. Isolation, mental overload, and the difficulty of drawing a clear line between personal and professional life are challenges many of us face daily. In an era where work-life balance is increasingly emphasized, it’s evident how much our emotions influence our productivity and well-being—especially when the office walls disappear and home becomes our sole workspace.
From this awareness, Dectar decided to create a free counseling service for our employees: a safe virtual space where anyone, no matter where they are, can receive professional support.
This initiative responded to the emotional challenges amplified by intense work rhythms and professional pressures. Not coincidentally, many of us had just watched Inside Out 2 while reflecting on this. Watching the film, we realized how the personified emotions—anxiety, anger, joy, and sadness—perfectly reflect the emotional dynamics we experience daily, both in our personal and work lives.
Anxiety at Work: A Global Challenge
The film invites us to reflect on the importance of emotions in the workplace. In recent years, research has shown how emotions like anxiety, sadness, and fear can negatively affect performance and professional motivation. It’s no surprise that today, work-life balance is one of the top priorities for people, an increasingly difficult equilibrium to maintain.
After the pandemic, anxiety became one of the leading causes of distress, to the point of being recognized as one of the driving forces behind the “great resignation,” where thousands of people resigned or sought new work opportunities. Job dissatisfaction, tied to toxic environments and a lack of attention to employees’ emotions, has created a climate that hinders professional fulfillment.
The Importance of Acknowledging Emotions
In recent years, various studies have demonstrated how emotions influence our motivation and professional performance. The pandemic further intensified these dynamics, revealing how hard it is to keep work and private life separate, especially in remote settings. That’s why our decision to offer free emotional support to employees goes beyond just promoting well-being: it addresses a real need to recognize emotions and learn to manage them healthily.
How Can Counseling Help in the Workplace?
At Dectar, we understand the importance of addressing these challenges. That’s why we decided to offer a free counseling service to our employees. Counseling is a support service that helps individuals explore and tackle their emotional difficulties, both personal and professional, with the help of a qualified professional. It’s not just about improving individual well-being but contributing to a healthier and more productive company climate.
The counseling approach aligns with a modern view of management that recognizes the value of emotional intelligence. As psychologist Daniel Goleman points out, companies that neglect emotions create toxic environments where competition and lack of support lead to stress and dissatisfaction.
Lessons from Inside Out 2: A New Model for Corporate Well-Being
Inside Out 2 taught us a valuable truth: emotions are inevitable, even negative ones like fear, anger, and anxiety. And most importantly, we cannot run away from or suppress them. Our work, like life, is a constant balance of these feelings, and learning to recognize and manage them is essential for our well-being.
Through our counseling service, we aim to help our employees do just that: understand that they are not alone in their emotions and that there are tools to face even the most difficult days. As Inside Out 2 teaches us, even anxiety can become a guide if we learn to listen to it and manage it properly.
With remote counseling, we can improve the well-being of our employees and the company atmosphere, promoting a culture based on empathy and emotional intelligence.