Your wellbeing and working from home

For many of us, working from home on an ongoing basis will be challenging - especially if you're used to being on campus during the work week. In particular, it's important to establish:

1) A comfortable space at home in which you can work;

2) Ways to collaborate with colleagues and maintain a sense of team spirit when you aren't sharing the same work area. 

With this in mind, you may find the following guides useful: 

Wellbeing and working from home

Staying connected while studying and working remotely

This is likely be an uncertain and challenging time for everyone, and it's quite natural to feel anxious or worried. However, there are a range of resources available to help you to manage (and boost) your mental health. 

The School's staff counselling services can be contacted remotely to arrange a telephone appointment or to discuss any concerns you may have. Alternatively, you can access the School's Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for conditional support on all aspects of wellbeing, including personal finance and legal matters, counselling, health advice and more. You can contact the EAP in confidence by calling 0800 107 6147 (quoting LSE as the name of your employer) or access the online portal by visiting www.colleaguesupport.co.uk (entering code 206011 as your username and password).

The charity Mind, with whom the School have been working as part of the 'Building Mentally Healthy Universities' pilot, have a wealth of information and resources on their website, including a dedicated webpage on 'Coronavirus and your wellbeing'. 

Activities to proactively promote mindfulness can also have a positive impact on your mental health. It only takes a few moments to sign up to 10 Minute Mind using your LSE email address and receive daily mindfulness tracks. 

It can be all too easy to forget about nutrition when your daily routine has been disrupted, but a little preparation can go a long way to ensuring that this doesn't happen. 

There are lots of foods that you can put straight in the freezer instead of the fridge. This includes meat and poultry, ready prepared meals, fresh pasta, bread - and did you know you can even freeze butter and cheese? Here’s some examples:

Milk: All milk can be stored in the freezer and defrosted before use. Just make sure it’s still sealed. It should be defrosted fully in the fridge before using.

Cheese: Some hard cheeses freeze very well, firmer types like cheddar, gouda and Swiss cope well with the freezing process and maintaining their structure. You can freeze in blocks or grate it and freeze in handy portion sizes.

Bread: Baked goods like bread, rolls, pittas, bagels and crumpets can all be easily frozen. Loaves of bread can be bought ready-sliced or whole to be sliced yourself before freezing. Most toasters have a defrost function so you can toast baked goods from frozen.

Pasta: Fresh pasta is a great option to keep in the freezer. Some pastas won’t have to be defrosted before use either, they’ll defrost once put in boiling water.

Fruit and vegetables: Our frozen fruit and vegetables in the freezer aisle are not the only option; some fresh fruits like bananas and berries when frozen make great ingredients for smoothies and for baking.

Batch cooking: Consider cooking a larger portion at mealtimes to freeze for a later date. Make sure you freeze the leftovers as soon as possible, once they’ve fully cooled and mark clearly the date it was cooked and frozen on the container for later reference. And only defrost or re-heat the meal once.

Around three quarters of our ready prepared meals and over half our desserts are suitable for freezing and have the logo on pack. Simply freeze on the day of purchase and follow the guidance on packaging for the length of time it can stay frozen. Look out for the ‘suitable for freezing’ logo on product which also includes guidance for how long you can freeze each item for. 

Maintaining a fitness regime can be tricky if you are at home, but it isn't impossible. There's plenty of online exercise videos, tips and guidance to help you stay active even if you're in the house - free yoga, 5 minute exercises and much more. Also, the NHS website includes some quick and easy workouts that you can try in the comfort of your own home. 

You can also join online fitness classes that are organised by the School, including Body Balance (which is based on yoga and pilates) and Body Conditioning (a body weights exercise class). All of these classes are held via Zoom - once you've signed up, a link to join will be emailed to you on the morning of the class. 

We hope to add more online classes so keep an eye out for further announcements in Staff News.