Wellness and Remote Working Resources

Dear Colleagues, 

Over the past few weeks, you have demonstrated a capacity to respond to a dire situation with flexibility and compassion. We know that these actions have been difficult, but your rapid response and hard work has undoubtedly helped to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 within our community.

Challenges like these bring uncertainty, anxiety, and stress. We are truly grateful for the ways in which our students, faculty and staff have come together - even in a time when many of us have moved to working and teaching remotely. At times like these, it is important that we support one another. However, it is also important that we take care of ourselves. Cura personalis does not just apply to how we care for others, but it should also apply to how we care for our own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. So as you are coping with the stress of these changes, I’d like to make a few suggestions for taking care of your own wellbeing: 

• Get an appropriate amount of sleep
• Eat a balanced diet and maintain good nutrition
• Take a break from the news about COVID-19 (e.g., television, social media, news articles)
• Use effective coping strategies to relieve stress. Focus on solutions that have worked in the past for you (e.g., prayer, meditation, exercise, deep breathing, journaling, or getting social support from family and friends). 

We have been working over the past few weeks to identify resources, best practices, and other information to help address these challenges. 

A full list of these resources can be found on the OneSLU: Supporting Our Community website. We will be adding new content each week and highlighting a few of these resources in the HR Bulletin and Newslink in the days and weeks to come.

We hope that you will find some of these helpful for sustaining your health and well-being as well as dealing with challenges of working remotely.

Thank you for everything that you have done and continue to do to make Saint Louis University the community that our mission calls us to be.

Sincerely, 

Mickey Luna
Vice President - Human Resources