Taking mental health seriously.
The issue of work and life balance as an everyday challenge of professionals across the globe is becoming a high priority due to different but converging circumstances. A significant point of concern is the increasing frequency of mental health issues that are reported by millennial workers. With potentially many hours lost during workdays due to anxiety, inability to focus, and stress-related ailments, organizations around the world are re-examining their approach to mental health issues. Many are trying to deploy resources and implement projects that help mitigate the adverse effects of mental health issues on work productivity. Indeed, job-related stress is the source of more health complaints and problems than financial or family issues.
Dell Technologies is one of the global scale organizations that have started providing specialized mental health services, seeking the assistance of experts, mental healthcare providers, behavioral scientists, psychologists, both counselors, and clinicians. At the same time, Dell Technologies is both supplier and contributor of products and solutions that help medical professionals and scientists understand mental health issues better and device treatments, therapies, and medicine.
Given the fact that each year, businesses around the world lose billions due to setbacks in their employees’ performance caused by mental health issues, it is important to seriously address those problems and prevent them in the first place.
A daily balancing act and the need to “unplug”.
I admit that reality is not ideal when it comes to balancing our obligations at home and in our families, with our professional demands. More often than not, we have to deal with long hours, over-exerting ourselves, sacrifice quality time with our loved ones because of business emergencies. The additional stress from the restriction in our movement due to the global health emergency doesn’t help the situation either.
Thankfully, digital technology can once again give answers and come to the rescue. Paradoxically, tech tools, and smart applications can unhook us from our addiction to our smartphones and over-indulgence in social media, while helping us relax and meditate.
Smart sensors can monitor our vital biological indicators and provide us with valuable information on how to best organize a daily exercise and diet regime, schedule time to relax, and find a few moments to catch our breath and meditate. Some ingenious inventors have devised clever systems to help us isolate ourselves for a while at the office or use applications to get in touch with our inner selves in tranquil meditation. Other projects leverage technology to understand the intricacies of human behavior based on our online interactions, and help us develop digital experiences that are more beneficial to our well-being.
Communication technology brings people together.
Technology is the essential factor that also brings people together and facilitates instant communication in times where physical presence is impossible. Organizations implement widespread use of systems and solutions for remote working, teleconferencing, team management, and collaborative project workflow to maintain their operations and minimize the impact of movement restrictions.
Increased communication and interaction with business colleagues, partners, and customers can reassure us that we stay on top of our obligations and minimizes the anxiety of being unable to take action because of our restricted mobility. Especially for people who thrive on connecting with other people, and their job requires calls and meetings throughout the day, modern communication tools are essential.
Emerging technologies hold the promise.
Emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, and 5G networks hold the key to even better communication capabilities. High-speed wireless networks will make it possible to build even better telepresence solutions by creating immersive experiences with virtual and augmented reality appliances that will be much more comfortable, unobtrusive and easy to use than the current offerings, providing us with much more realistic experiences.
Eventually, I hope that technology will help us solve our current pandemic crisis, and we will be able to move freely once again. The advancements in communication and mobility technologies will stay with us. Already, even the most demanding tasks can be addressed by powerful mobile workstations that allow us to work efficiently untied from our desks and the comfort of our environment. Organizations are already expanding their infrastructure to span across multiple cloud networks and manage their assets remotely. Powerful edge servers collect, aggregate, and combine the torrents of data generated by devices at the edge, to produce structured data and fuel a new breed of services and applications.
The workforce transformation
All these technological innovations lead to a significant disruption of the traditional working paradigm and cause a decentralization of human resources. The new mobile workforce can benefit from a more flexible, comfortable, and personalized working environment, with access to mental health services, opportunities to unplug and relax during the day, stay physically and mentally balanced and find more time to spend with their partners and children. Dell Technologies is striving to implement this new paradigm and offer all their technical resources to build this sustainable future.
