Ze Meng Li

There is a group of people who would be more relaxed when working remotely because they often struggle to communicate with other people, behave normally at any kind of public event and speak in front of others. In psychology, these symptoms are called social anxiety disorder (SAD). SAD is one of the most common mental health conditions, and it affects millions of people around the world. For people living with social anxiety, the workplace can be a pretty stressful place. They protect themselves the best they can by avoiding situations in which their ‘flaws’ might be seen by colleagues. Even having a conversation with others about experiencing social anxiety is not an easy thing to do for anyone feeling socially anxious. Keeping away from such a workplace seems like a good way to deal with social anxiety, but it actually makes anxiety worse.

I designed a toolkit for the workplace and named it Cheerboard. It is suitable for use in a team or an entire company. For those who are about to face public occasions or stressful social engagements, Cheerboard provides a card to write down their work tasks. They can either choose to do this anonymously or disclose their name. Other members of the team can stick different gesture symbols on the board to encourage the sufferer, or they can also leave a message to tell the sufferer their own experiences or feelings. The only principle is to encourage employees to actively express their encouragement for others.