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For many white collar and office workers, these past few months have seen a dramatic shift in how (and where) our workdays take place. While our weekdays previously revolved around the office, many now see themselves spending most, if not all, days working from home, with all signs pointing to remote working becoming the new norm.
A Gartner survey illustrates how 82% of leaders expect to continue allowing workers to work remotely at least some of the time even after offices open. Perhaps just as significant, almost half (47%) of leaders who responded expect employees to continue working remotely all the time for the foreseeable future. Many organisations have also formally stated and extended their work from home policies. Twitter and payments service Square have told employees that they can continue to work from home for as long as they wish, and never have to return to the office if they so choose. Facebook expects half their workforce to be completely remote in the next 5-10 years, and even Google, which was initially reticent to endorse remote working, has stated employees need not return until at least July 2021. And most of such policies don’t just apply to U.S. employees, but extend to their global locations as well.
Many other companies are likely to follow suit, and consensus is that these implications will last far beyond the end of COVID-19. Indeed, it is likely that the structure of work might never be the same again. Yet, even the most ardent advocates of remote working have to admit that for many newly remote employees, this was not what they expected when they were first told to stop coming in to the office. Even as most of us have managed to (somewhat) adapt in the first few months of the transition, many leaders and teams have been asking us whether this can continue in a sustainable way.
We never leave the office…
One of the most frequent comments we hear from newly remote employees is that, essentially, they are always “in the office”. Even though the lines between work and personal time have been blurring for years, especially with the advent of smartphones, one still could, to a large extent, expect the work day to end in some degree when we left the office.
But as things stand now, remote employees who work from home never really leave their offices - because they wake up and sleep in the same place. Despite some initial claims that working from home might help rebalance the work/life juggle because it eliminates the morning and evening commute - potentially saving hours each week - most people have actually seen themselves working even more than before. A recent survey by Tessian revealed that 61% of employees felt their company had a “culture of presenteeism” that makes them work longer hours than needed. With technology that enables us to stay connected at all times (and in some cases employee surveillance software that tracks what is done and how much time one spends doing it), it has become very hard for anyone to break away from immediately responding to emails, messages, and requests, no matter what time of day (and night) they arrive.
One of the most frequent comments we hear from newly remote employees is that, essentially, they are always “in the office”.
For many, the lines between work and personal life have not just blurred, they have been wiped out completely. Yet, we know that this cannot be sustained, and research has shown time and time again that this is detrimental to employee productivity or engagement. Indeed, we have begun hearing from clients who are already experiencing employee attrition that stem from this exact issue.
Below are two simple practices anyone can adopt immediately to help make their work from home experience better for them and their team. These are just as applicable whether you love the remote working experience, or cannot wait to return to the office.
For context, we understand there are a myriad of challenges that organisations and employees now face as a result of working from home, and most of them require deeper conversation and discussion within the organisation and teams - to establish new norms, processes, expectations, and cultures that reflect the new working reality of the moment. Although our team spends considerable time facilitating such sessions for organisations and we see this as paramount for any real success in remote working at an organisational level, for the sake of this article, we will focus on two immediately actionable steps to help you make some progress on the issue that we have heard time and time again - a challenge that we have seen across almost all organisations, industries, and teams.
Have Explicit Start and End Times to Your Day (And Encourage Teammates to Do the Same)
Set very clear intentions for the time that your day at work begins and ends, and communicate this clearly with your team. More importantly, actually stick to it.
If you need some flexibility in the middle of your day, and your role allows for it, build that in as well. Acknowledge that even if you (or anyone else on the team) might choose to work late or in different, asynchronous time periods, the expectation is clear that team members are not required to respond outside of their working hours.
One important distinction that leaders need to make when it comes to remote work is that time spent at the desk does not reflect productivity and results. In the traditional office environment there is a tendency for this direct relationship to be assumed, where no matter what, employees are expected to be there from the start of work until the end of the working day, even if they had finished their tasks in a shorter period of time. If it is not necessary for everyone to be working in tandem at specific hours, forcing this same culture when teams are working from home will only lead to resentment, increased stress, and lower engagement.
By setting distinct working hours, we are able to embrace some level of normalcy and control in our personal lives, reducing work creep and the constant pressure of always needing to be present and responding.
Set Up a Dedicated Work Area/Work Station
Building upon the previous point of delineating your time, the next stage is to clearly define your surroundings. If you have the space and resources, set up an area that is dedicated to work, and as far as possible, keep the boundary sacred. Refrain from doing personal activities at the work area, and limit performing work tasks outside of the station. And yes, that means no more working from the bed and the sofa.
Our settings and physical surroundings, to some degree, will dictate what we do and how we should behave. The office facilitates working, the bedroom beckons sleep, the living room is meant for lounging. Even within a specific space like the traditional office: Our desk is for personal work, the pantry for breaks and chats with colleagues, and the meeting room for collaboration.
To really make working from home sustainable, we need to put ourselves in the right physical space at the right time. The work area does not need to be fancy, superbly well-equipped, or large - just functional and dedicated to work and work alone.
These 2 steps should get you some way to making progress on one of the main challenges and issues newly remote workers face. If you want to learn more about how to actually make the work from home experience even better and minimise the drawbacks, feel free to email us at info@creativityasia.com, or check out some of our programmes and Virtual Team Building sessions using LEGO and interactive experiences.
If you find these interesting, just reach out to experience a demo with our facilitators. We’d love to explore this with you.