Working from home can be great for balancing work and personal life responsibilities. It could be no morning or evening commute. For those in large metropolitan areas, that could be a time savings of an hour or more each way. Having that time to prepare a meal, throw in laundry, or even use it to finish up a report can be very helpful. But not everyone can turn it off or feel like they have permission to turn it off when working from home.
Most of us are familiar with Intuit, whose products include TurboTax and Credit Karma. They have a large number of fully remote employment options in software engineering, user experience, accounting, and sales. IBM is another brand-name company with many fully remote employees. They are among companies like HubSpot, NBC Universal, Fidelity Investments, and others with a remote workforce.
What they all want is for employees to be productive, maintain resilience, and be loyal to the company. What can get in the way is when employees cannot or will not step away from work.
Practically speaking, if you work on your dining room table and also eat meals there with the family, the lines can get blurred. If they work with coworkers in other time zones, they may feel they have to be on much earlier than a normal working day or much later. Helping them define healthy boundaries can keep them from burning out.
One of the easiest ways to help remote workers manage time is to be unambiguous about setting work hours, both for the employee and for their manager. It is important to make clear that an employee is not expected to respond to an email from someone at 11 PM or 6 AM. If you are using a CRM system, it’s pretty simple to track if employees are sending emails at odd hours, and it gives HR or the manager the ability to address the issue.
Review the onboarding training process for remote workers to make sure they have what they need from the beginning of their time with your organization. Just like in-person employees, it is important they are getting regular feedback, preferably on an agreed-upon schedule.
It’s also important to train managers who oversee remote workers. They can ensure that a remote worker on their team is clear about expectations, hours they should be available, and how their performance is being measured. Without this clarity, employees may put unnecessary stress on themselves.
There are also some simple suggestions your company can share with remote workers to separate work from home life:
These simple suggestions can help reduce burnout and give remote employees the energy to be more productive during working hours and be more fulfilled in their personal lives. That can translate into less turnover, less burnout, and higher levels of productivity.