I work from home but I also live there! How to separate smart working and private life
The Covid-19 pandemic sped up the discovery of agile working. Working from home, or remotely, was the only alternative during lockdown. So, we learnt to appreciate it, but also to hate it. Let’s discover how home can become also our workplace without interfering with our private lives.
It has been nearly three months since many companies had to “convert” to smart working. We went from the fear of not being able to control the employees, to “forced labour” and now, we realise that this may be the best way forward as it entails advantages for everybody. It is no coincidence that big companies such as Twitter have stated that from now on, they will follow this model, and many other small and medium companies, taking a cue from them, are starting right now, at least partially.
The smart working routine
It is also true that, for the agile work to last as an efficient work method, where possible, it is necessary to treasure what we were able to learn during the past 3 months.
LinkedIn carried out a research on a sample of two thousand employees who have worked in smart mode during this period, finding out that 21% struggles with switching off from work and that anxiety and stress have increased compared to when they worked in the office.
And, to think of it, it can be understandable: you practically spend all day in the same space where you work, eat, live and relax. It is difficult to set boundaries between the beginning and the end of a working day.
As a result, it is important to create a little daily routine that will help us better define work time and free time, this way avoiding the stress caused by working from home. Marco Maestri*, SweetHive manager of the Prevention and Safety team, shares with us some survival tricks:
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Wake-up as the time as before (removing the time you needed to commute!) and every day at the same time. This way you will be able to better plan you working day;
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Have breakfast. Charge your batteries to face the day as if you had to go out of the house. Thus, avoiding having many snacks throughout the morning;
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Have a little break every 50 minutes and take your eyes off the computer’s screen. Try to look out of the window and look at the horizon;
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Respect the lunch break, without staying in front of your computer;
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Create a closing ritual for your working session at the end of the day, like tidying up your desk, so to separate the time for work and that for private life;
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Do some stretching or walk up and down the stairs.
You do not see me, but I am here
Another factor of smart working which can negatively influence our ability to work is the feeling of having to reply more quickly compared to when we are in the office. According to the LinkedIn’s research, 22% of employees felt as if they had to make themselves available for longer than the normal working hours. Even though there is no punching of the timecard, you sense a silent obligation to always be online and available. And this implicates a bigger struggle in switching off at the end of the day and, therefore, the anxiety we were talking about earlier on.
No stress, thank you!
We just read a few tricks for employees to manage better their day from home without stress. But the business managers can also take some measures to make sure this performance anxiety does not arise.
The first and, maybe the simplest, is that of using systems or platforms that do not control the attendance of the employees, but their final work. For example, BusinessRM does not tell you when the collaborators are online, but tells you the progress status of an ongoing project: the context being filled with messages, documents and information exchanges is the proof that all the collaborators are working together towards the common goal.
The second one is also simple in theory, but more complicated in practice: having trust. If you give the right tools, establish clear goals and create a friendly work environment, the employees will continue to do their best even remotely, working from home or from the beach :-).
*On WiredExperience you can see the courses on workplace safety held by Marco Maestri with his M&P Project Academy here.
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