The world went remote almost overnight once the pandemic hit. While remote work was something a lot of Americans adopted, with Silicon Valley as usual taking the lead, there was still the reluctance to go remote fulltime in other parts of the world.
The pandemic tousled everything around. There was nothing anybody could do about it. As the virus spread throughout the world, one country at a time, there was a lot of ambiguity on how to handle corporate interactions.
With such a sudden disruption, it definitely had a whiplash effect. Almost overnight the world was forced to go remote, an occurrence no one had predicted or anticipated. This was beyond anyone’s comprehension and anything anyone could have ever imagined.
So what happened after remote work became the mode of work?
The struggles everyone faced in coming to terms with the new terms and conditions.
Are we working more than before?
Employees may find remote work enticing, but it wouldn’t be such a strong trend if employers didn’t see the benefits from their side of the desk as well. According to new Harvard Business School study, companies with work-from-anywhere rules may increase employee productivity, minimize attrition, and lower organizational expenses. Another study found that telecommuting employees with highly sophisticated professions that don’t require much teamwork or social support can outperform their office-based peers. A distributed workforce is also better positioned to keep operations going in the case of a natural or man-made disaster, even if portion of the group falls offline.
Are we really working more than before? Or working more hours? Do we have, what several termed it as, survivors’ guilt? Trying to overcompensate of retaining our jobs where countless others lost theirs?
If we get to the crux of it – most people who have felt burnt out due to “overworking” are more often than not simply unable to manage their times and tasks properly. This may be due to the fact that they are used to clocking in and clocking out at given time stamps. That being said, several companies have still noticed a notable spike in overall productivity.
Work-life balance is one of the most difficult aspects of working remotely, and it has ramifications for companies. Overworking, in which employees spend too much of their time working or thinking about work, but also performing too little work, especially if there are distractions at home, might be a problem. Employees in the United States prefer a decent work/life balance more than health benefits, according to Gartner.
So what is the actual problem and how do HR personnel tackle such things when they face these problems. More now than before?
One simple yet effective solution was to consciously take breaks. Be more deliberate about clocking in and out of work – no matter what time one starts and ends their tasks. CompanyCam included half days midweek to overcome Zoom fatigue and other such measures where brought in to mitigate the effects of overwork, burnouts and a new terminology “Zoom Fatigue”.
Yes, it is like an oxymoron, however, a lot of companies have made concerted efforts to have virtual events to engage employees.
Zoom and other platforms are used for activities other than work, so that employees have the chance of having their “water cooler conversations” and interactive sessions to keep isolation at bay.
Collaboration is key in such situations, in fact, over communication is what has kept confusion out of the loop.
This is where communications technology may help, by delivering something comparable to regular work-based social engagement. At the very least, solutions like Microsoft Teams and Zoom help mitigate the bad effects. Management should strive to foster a company culture in which workers use online communication tools as often as possible, and not just for work-related discussions. Employees will be more likely to share topics like travels, weekend plans, and social activities if a route for personal sharing is established. It may also be prudent to allow some flexibility so that employees may come to work at times when they believe it would benefit them.
Collaboration challenges might arise as a result of your workforce’s physical isolation and dependence on remote teams. Employees, on the other hand, lose out on the kinds of unexpected interactions that often lead to fresh ideas. These varied challenges may therefore have an impact on your company’s creativity and innovation.
It’s common for office workers to get together for coffee or lunch, and there’s no reason why home workers can’t do the same. Have virtual lunches once a week, where various workers may “meet” through video conference and converse as if they were in the office. You can also set aside time for open virtual coffee breaks, when we link up various staff for video chats. This is especially beneficial for developing ties between people who don’t necessarily work together every day. You may even apply this technique to post-work bonding activities that you would normally do in person, such as virtual gaming nights or viewing movies together (e.g. via a Zoom screen share or a video platform like Netflix Party). Extend it to include your team’s other ethnic events as well!
So how do you “Go Home” when you are working from home? Like already shared, be deliberate about your actions and timings. Till you do not switch off, you are literally always on work mode. Something that has proven to cause high rate of burnouts and lower productivity. So it is obviously a loss to everyone around.
Sedentary lifestyles are a typical concern in office contexts, but they also apply to remote work. After example, it’s more difficult to enforce breaks and lunch hours when dealing with remote teams, and the trip to and from work is also eliminated, potentially reducing regular activity.
Overworking, in which employees spend too much of their time working or thinking about work, but also performing too little work, especially if there are distractions at home, might be a problem. Employees in the United States prefer a decent work/life balance more than health benefits, according to Gartner.
It’s important to keep track of how much time your staff spends at work. While overtime might be beneficial to some businesses, it must be balanced against the need to maintain a healthy work-life balance. If at all feasible, provide employees with access to a physical workplace as well, since this may help them to avoid home-based distractions.
Just though productivity is higher right now doesn’t indicate it will continue to be so. According to the same NYT storey, several businesses are experiencing employee dissatisfaction due to a lack of social engagement. Employee mental health will begin to impede productivity over time, lowering employee satisfaction.
In the first few months of quarantine, companies like Splunk, Affirm, and Microsoft experienced a significant increase in productivity, but the loneliness of working from home had an impact on productivity and job happiness over term.
At the end of the day, it is not the number of hours put into your work, but the quality of tasks done that matters. Employers are now realizing the folly of the regimented 9 – 5 work life, which may have its own perks, but needs to be tweaked to suit today’s world better. Who had known, or predicted, that a pandemic would push remote life several years on? We are already living the “Future of Remote Work”. What goes on hence, is something everyone needs to figure out. We have done quite well the world over, alas, a lot more needs to be done. But then need is the mother of all inventions right?
When paired with clear objective setting, regular communication with employees can assist to maintain productivity levels high. When more action is needed, performance and activity monitoring tools may be able to assist employers in identifying remote workers who are not working hard enough, but privacy considerations must be considered. Additionally, ensure that staff have a display configuration that promotes efficiency, since working from a laptop may be sluggish and wasteful.
We have discussed some of the more common struggles of WFH but the real question still remains; has the work-life balance improved or are we in essence working longer than before under the pretense of “working remotely”
According to several reports employees who work from home are spending more time at their desks and have a heavier burden than before the Covid epidemic, according to two studies.
According to data from the business assistance provider NordVPN Teams, the average amount of time an employee working from home in the UK, Austria, Canada, and the US is logged on at their computer has climbed by more than two hours per day since the coronavirus outbreak.
Employees in the United Kingdom have stretched their working week by about 25% and, like those in the Netherlands, are logging off at 8 p.m., according to the report.
In a separate study provided with the Guardian by the remote team-building firm Wildgoose, 44 percent of UK employees said they were expected to complete more work in the previous year, with those at mid-sized businesses reporting the highest workload increases.
As the line between working and leisure time blurs, home workers are taking shorter lunch breaks, working through sickness, and more workers are “always on.”
According to a poll of 2,800 employees conducted by Los Angeles-based staffing business Robert Half, over 70% of professionals who moved to remote work as a result of the epidemic now work on weekends, and 45 percent typically work longer hours during the week than they did previously. Working parents were also shown to be more likely than those without children to work weekends and for more than eight hours each day. Men were more likely than women to work on weekends and have workweeks of 40 hours or more. In addition, individuals under the age of 40 are more likely than those over 40 to work weekends and for more than eight hours every day.
So why is this happening? According to Cali Williams Yost, a nationally recognized expert on workplace flexibility and founder of the consultancy Flex + Strategy Group in New York City, an underlying problem is a lack of employee training on how to manage the boundaries between work and life in the years leading up to COVID-19. “Managing the boundaries between work and life is a skill set that most people don’t have and still don’t have,” she added. “Giving an employee a laptop and telling them to download Zoom or some other collaboration software isn’t going to be adequate to help them manage their job and life during the epidemic and beyond.”
Experts believe that the trend toward longer workdays is unsustainable, and that HR and line managers should urge employees to take breaks during the day and take time off as required. “The epidemic has compelled businesses to put employee experience first,” McDonald, senior executive director at Robert Half suggests that wise businesses are implementing long-term improvements to meet their employees’ needs and well-being, such as giving them more autonomy and flexibility.
Despite the fact that working from home means working longer hours, many employees prefer it over commuting to work. In a recent study, over 80% of individuals said they would want to work from home at least once a week, and nearly 40% said they would resign or search for a new job if their boss tried to compel them to return to the office full-time. Working from home five days a week was particularly appealing to highly educated women with young children.
The epidemic has altered American work habits, with roughly a third of American employees planning to work from home in late winter and early spring 2020. It will take years for American work life to return to normal, and “the office” may never look the same as it did before the epidemic, with almost all employees reporting to overcrowded workspaces on a regular basis. Video meetings and more flexible workplace environments may be here to stay in some circumstances.
Wherever feasible, the ideal answer is to present options. Allow workers to work in the office if they honestly prefer it, and give them enough freedom to vary their work arrangements on a regular basis to keep things interesting. Offering incentives for working from home, such as flexible start hours, may also be beneficial.
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