What are the ways to increase the mental wellbeing of a team working remotely?

There are several options I've seen: - offering additional day off (be it once a month or switching entirely to a 4-day workweek) - finding ways to connect despite the distance - we've been regularly doing that since March (e.g. having game nights or even a virtual wine tasting). There's also a Slack add-on called Donut that connects you with a random person in your team once a week so you can get to know people you don't usually cross paths in your work and have a virtual coffee. - as the holidays are approaching, we're not planning to give up on our Secret Santa tradition :) I am pretty sure this will make us all feel a little better! Yet, there are not many ways managers can keep an eye on the employees' wellbeing. It's all up to the person to keep sane. For example, for me it's been my dog (and WoW) that helped me cope with all the stress :D others might find relief in other things!

Nothing will come close to working together in one physical space. However, we’ve been organizing gaming nights where our team plays Fortnite together, that does bring down stress levels while being fun.

My teammates and I do a virtual scrum every morning, just to make sure everyone is on the same page with tasks and overall goals. We make sure and talk about personal things outside work as well, and I think that is crucial for maintaining our wellbeing during this stressful season.

Virtual parties and hangouts work great for us. You really need to put some time and $$ into it though. We plan ice breaker questions, discussions, even games. A couple times we've shipped boxes to each person with little gifts. What people really crave is personal connection so I think the key is to create virtual opportunities to, well, simply connect. This caught my eye too - it's a marketing event mind you not a team or internal event - but the way they marketed it I thought was really well done: https://pages.introhive.com/wine...

If I may say, this is quite a presumptuous post. It really does entirely depends on the team member. If you have been "lucky" enough to only work in environments where everyone gets energy from others, then it's perhaps not particularly diverse (in the sense the behaviour and what people get from the office environment is too homogenous). There are some types of people who are happy in their own company and they're almost always more productive out of the office, than inside. That said, this doesn't mean people want to be like that all the time, and indeed, many have days where they do need interaction. In either case, you'll never know without checking up.

branch.gg seems quite promising and a new experience

@aleynacatak its the small things. For example, this time of year, a remote holiday party or secret santa gift exchange can be a fun way to connect on a more personal and light-hearted level than day-to-day business may call for.

My biggest issue working remotely is that it requires an async mindset that many companies have yet to adopt. My boss, his boss, and his boss's boss are all still working synchronously, and that takes its toll on people, as the synchronous nature of a single deadline leaves no breathing space when you're remote: it's like you're working on an agency and every day is customer demo day.

Communication, especially informal chats. It's a lot harder to create those human moments while working remotely, e.g. overhearing a conversation and joining in, getting into a chat with someone while getting up for a coffee, chipping into a spontaneous debate about a new technology etc. Those are really important for getting to know people on a personal level and having some laughs, but really difficult to replicate when everyone is remote. Having an informal channel on your team chat can help, (e.g. somewhere everyone can post about things outside of a work context). Also a chatbot like https://www.producthunt.com/post... pairs team members up for a coffee each week and can help people break a lot of ice within the team.