Weekly Wellbeing Resources: Lockdown Lessons, Family Zooms and More!

The Alera Group Wellbeing team wishes you and your loved ones a wonderful holiday season as we approach the end of 2021. Below you'll find this week’s curated list of wellbeing resources.  Feel free to share these resources, as appropriate, with your team.  Of note, there will be no resources for the week of December 21st or 28th but the distribution will start back up on January 4th! 

Have a safe and healthy week!

Career Wellbeing

• Returning to Work After Lockdown: Lessons from Wuhan – Researchers surveyed and followed hundreds of workers in Wuhan to explore how both employees and managers prepared for the return to work.  This article discusses the key commonalities of the most successful teams. 

• How to ‘Captivate’ – Effectively Connecting with Others – Vanessa Van Edwards, author of the best-selling book ‘Captivate’, shares the scientific principles of succeeding with people and tips for being more effective whether on a zoom call or in person. 

Social & Family Wellbeing

• 11 Tips for Making the Most of this Holiday Season as a Caregiver - Being a family caregiver can be challenging at the best of times, and between the regular pressures of the holiday season along with the compounding stress of the pandemic, this year is looking unlike any other.  Here are 11 tips for making the most of this holiday season.


• 27 Conversation Starters for Zoom Calls with Family – If you’re in a family where frequent Zoom catch-ups have been going strong since March, you’ve probably run out of things to say a few times.  Here are some great questions to keep the conversation flowing. 

Financial Wellbeing

• Year-End Financial Deadlines – Facet Wealth shares the five tax and financial moves you must make by December 31st.

Physical Wellbeing

• 3 Work-From-Home Posture Problems and How to Solve Them ASAP – Now that many people have been working from home for almost 8 full months, chiropractors are starting to see the damage it’s causing.  Here are the most common issues and how to solve them. 

Emotional Wellbeing

• SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) Is Not Just the Winter Blues – Why It May Be Hitting You Harder This Year – It can be tempting to dismiss SAD as a touch of the “winter blues. But Professor of Psychology, Kathryn Roecklein, says the best approach is to accept and recognize that it’s something that we may genuinely suffer from — and need support for.  Rocklein describes what SAD is and what you can do to manage it.


• How to Release Anxiety by Not Fighting Your Thoughts – This piece explores a newer cognitive-based approach that emphasizes opening to our experience rather than pushing away the parts we don’t like (like anxiety).  Psychologist Seth Gillihan gives you a step by step example to show you how to get started. 

Community Wellbeing

• ‘Adopting’ Health Care Workers to Say Thank You – This quick video shows how people are stepping up to help health care heroes as the pandemic continues.  How can you say thank you to the health care heroes in your community? 

Employer Focused Wellbeing

• 7 Gallup Workplace insight: What We Learned in 2020 – As leaders navigated 2020’s tough questions, many made transformative discoveries and tapped into new performance potential.  Here are seven of Gallup’s workplace insight from 2020. 


• Battling Pandemic Blues: How Managers Can Rally the Troops – Work can feel tough for everyone right now, but the right thoughtful gestures from leaders can give employees the boost they need.