Why Remote Employees Can Feel Overworked (and How to Avoid It)

While many people who were afforded the option have likely grown used to remote work at this point, that does not mean a business that adopts it can do so with complete impunity. One considerable issue that many remote workers have been experiencing is a sincere issue of overwork, believe it or not. Let’s examine why this is a problem, and how you can address it in your own business.

Before we begin, it is important that we take note of a few trends that have emerged with the rise of wide scale remote work.

• The remote solutions that are now available allow workers to accomplish comparable productivity to that which was once reserved to the office, whereas remote capabilities were once far more limited.
• The sudden shift in the working environment has created a challenge for the workers who find themselves in the position where they are working from home, as isolation and the lack of control over their situation take their toll.
• One of the biggest issues with remote work comes from the lack of separation that many employees can face when their professional and personal lives are crammed into such close proximity. This only becomes worse when it is paired with the urge so many remote workers feel to prove their efficiency while at home.
• To ensure the security of their remote workers, many businesses are wisely implementing security protocols, but these protocols can often impact their productivity as they protect them.

When all these considerations combine, the idea that many employees have begun to feel the impacts of burnout should come as no surprise. Stressful news in the headlines (paired with the same routine day in and day out) can quickly become frustrating and disheartening.

Making these issues even worse, working from home can easily lead to overwork and the lack of a disconnect between home and work life. Without the opportunity to walk away, it becomes harder to disengage from work in general.

Overall, this results in a bad situation for you and your team. So, what can you do about it?

Don’t Overschedule

As an employer, it is only natural that you would want your team to be as productive as possible during this time, but it is also important that you aren’t force-feeding your team too many responsibilities. Triple-booking their schedules isn’t going to encourage them to work any faster.

In many cases, businesses are also actively trying to help their employees decompress by scheduling times to relax. Unfortunately, these efforts are easily undercut when these breaks conflict with two or three other responsibilities that have been scheduled at the same time.

Keeping your team sane will require you to take a step back and make sure that communications are clear amongst your team.

Set the Pace

It is also important that you actively make the effort to check in with your team members and eliminate as many frustrations as you can. Eliminate frivolous meetings and other small obligations so they can focus on their tasks and give them the tools to work as productively as possible.

Unfortunately, there is no telling how long the current situation will necessitate working from home, so this is something that any business sustaining its operations remotely will need to shoulder.

In terms of the technology that you will need to harness to do so, SCW can help you acquire and maintain it. To learn more, reach out to our team at (509) 534-1530.