Many employees around the world enjoy the benefits of remote work. There’s something comforting about not waking up early to get ready for work, wasting time in traffic during commutes, and having the freedom to work wherever and whenever you want. However, remote work also comes with several challenges for employees.
One of the biggest challenges of working remotely is keeping a stable work-life balance, an important element of healthy employment and efficient work. Fortunately, there are plenty of techniques to help remote employees maintain their work-life balance, and integrating these techniques into your workplace culture is very easy.
Here are the most common and effective methods to help remote employees balance their personal and professional lives.
Time Management Workshops
Lack of proper time management leads to work-life imbalance. This problem is most recognizable with remote and hybrid working practices, where employees have more flexible working hours that blend with the time they should disconnect from work. Educate your employees on time management techniques and practices to help them balance their work with personal time.
Host virtual workshops where employees can brainstorm ideas about how to manage their time efficiently. Implement clear working hours and set specific deadlines so employees can schedule their days accordingly.
To help employees visualize how much time they have for themselves and how to optimize their work-life balance, ask them to use a time-tracking app to manage their working hours. One of the many benefits of working remotely and hosting virtual workshops is that you have access to worldwide specialists.
This way you have limitless workshops to choose from and host some of the greatest experts in work-life balance. Organize these educational sessions to inform employees on how to balance out their lives, improve workplace engagement, and learn to disconnect from work.
In cases where a remote worker is particularly troubled with time management, it often helps to have one-on-one sessions. This method allows you to develop more personalized solutions to help them organize their working days and become more productive.
Ensure Employees Disconnect
When working from an office, it’s easy to disconnect from work. Once you’ve left the office, you can turn off email notifications and not be bothered by anything work-related. This disconnection is more tricky in remote work since your home is essentially your office.
There is so much technology at play in remote work, from static IPs to advanced Cloud networks, that make remote work so easy and sometimes it’s hard to disconnect from it all.
Many remote workers use their living rooms or bedrooms as their offices, making it even harder to relax next to their workstations. And once they get into the loop of regularly using their home as a place to work, suddenly, their home is their office, and their work is essentially their life.
Ask employees to set “Do Not Disturb” during their productive hours. This method ensures that, unless there is a very serious emergency, work matters will not bother employees during these hours. You can also recommend that employees stay away from their work computers outside working hours.
Furthermore, you can introduce an online scheduling app so your employees can manage their meetings more efficiently. Without physically being at the office, it’s easy to overlook one or two meetings and schedule several that overlap. This can lead to disorganization, and employees can miss important meetings.
This is why it’s so important for employees to disconnect from their work and their devices after finishing their daily tasks. Being able to disconnect means staying away from anything work-related and focusing on your own personal life without letting the anxiety of deadlines get in your way.
If employees use their computers for work, suggest they create a separate account for personal use. These small steps will help them disconnect from work and relax after they’ve finished their tasks.
Offer Flexibility Working Conditions
With the recent rise in the popularity of remote work, companies have begun to experiment with how the workplace functions. Some have switched to a hybrid of remote and on-site. Others have gone completely remote with the option of going to the office. And plenty of other companies have remained fully on-site.
However, even fully in-office companies have started to implement more flexible options for employees to help them manage their work-life balance. So, even if all the positions in the company are on-site, offer employees some of the privileges that come with remote work. This is where flexibility comes in.
A flexible working place is a good place to start. Equipping your offices with key fob systems will allow employees to come and go whenever it’s convenient for them. This, of course, goes hand in hand with time flexibility.
Employees commute from all manner of places, and it’s hard to say what obstacles they’re going to come across each day on their way to work. By offering a flexible daily schedule, employers can help ease the stress of employees coming to work and help them balance their life better.
For example, employees can check in to work later to avoid traffic jams, and during the day they can leave the office and continue their work elsewhere: their favorite nearby cafe, a calm park that’s down the street, or wherever else they prefer.
To make this possible, companies should also pay attention to security issues. Implementing secure systems accessible via static IPs can relieve the stress of signing into work from different places.
How to Promote Physical and Mental Self-Care
There are a variety of methods to improve the physical and mental wellness of employees working remotely that will help in developing a work-life balance. Remote employees are far less physically active during the day than if they were working from the office. This lack of activity can lead to slower metabolism, weight gain, a higher risk of heart disease, and many other negative effects.
The same goes for mental health. Spending the entire day in front of the computer with little to no interpersonal communication makes employees feel isolated and disengaged from their work. Remote work also causes high levels of stress, anxiety, and employee burnout which affects their work on top of their personal lives.
Self-care habits and regular exercise promote the physical and mental well-being of remote employees. Host optional weekly or daily yoga or pilates sessions over a virtual meeting. Even simple stretching can reduce the effects of prolonged physical inactivity. Offering company-covered gym benefits is another great way to promote physical activity.
Organize tons of team building that encourage remote employees to work on their physical and mental self-care routine as a group. This can help instill a culture of health awareness among the team and promote cooperation within the group when it comes to physical wellness.
Enforce Those Vacations and PTOs
Among the many benefits that companies offer, vacation days and paid time off (PTO) are the most commonplace. This is because vacations help boost the work-life balance of employees and ensure that they have some time for themselves. Vacations are also a great way to improve employee engagement since workers will come back having taken a much-needed break.
Ideally, employees should know exactly how many vacation days or PTOs they have left and use them all up by the end of the working year. However, some employees get so involved in their work, they forget all about how important it is to take a break and never use up any of their vacation days.
This is especially true for remote employees who don’t commute to a workplace, thus it’s easier for them to forget about their vacation since they have a far more flexible lifestyle. Now, when it comes to enforcing vacation and PTO, no one can force employees to go on vacation. At the end of the day, if they don’t feel as though they need a vacation, they won’t take it.
However, it is very important to regularly remind them about their available vacation days and PTOs. Send out quarterly emails reminding employees to schedule their breaks. Contact employees who haven’t used any of their vacation days individually and inquire into why they haven’t taken one yet.
By encouraging employees to take vacations and PTOs, companies can ensure they are doing everything in their power to promote a healthy work-life balance in their workforce.
Leveraging Scheduling and Management Apps
Much like how project management systems help workers control every aspect of a project, there are tons of time management apps that employees can use to control their lives. Ideally, everyone should have a perfect calendar, alarm, and clock in their heads to let them know when it’s time for work and to take a break.
Unfortunately, many employees lose track of time and end up working for far longer than they need to or not enough. Whether it’s anxiety over deadlines, perfectionist habits, or procrastination, there’s always something on our minds that prevents good work-life balance.
There are a ton of mobile apps out there designed to help maintain work-life balance. Using one or several time management and scheduling applications can help employees maintain a solid work-life balance.
First, it’s highly recommended to download a checklist or task application. Google Tasks, for example, can help employees keep track of their daily objectives, both personal and work-related.
There are also tons of scheduling apps for iPhone and Android. These can help employees perfectly map out their days and weeks to maintain a good work-life balance. For example, for every hour that they spend working, employees can schedule an hour or two for themselves throughout the week.
On top of that, employees can also schedule separate hours for professional development outside of their work. This way, they can also manage how much time they spend advancing their careers and honing professional skills.
Finally, some apps can help employees limit the time they spend on their computers or their phones with specialized app blockers. For example, some browsers have third-party extensions that can be set to block access to various websites after a particular hour.
Employees trying to maintain a better work-life balance can also block out work-related websites during their personal hours. And when they are working, they can block out distractions such as social media platforms or eCommerce marketplaces to help them stay focused on their work.
Encourage employees to download these time management and scheduling apps to improve their work-life balance. Many of these also come with premium versions, so employers can offer to purchase them as a workplace benefit. Ideally, employees should not have to rely on technology to help them focus or unwind, but if it’s an effective solution then it’s worth trying.
Encourage Breaks
Remote work can be just as tiring as working in the office if employees spend the whole day glued to their screens. As we’ve already established, this reality can have adverse effects on their mental and physical health.
A Harvard University study showed that looking at a screen without taking a break every 30 or 15 minutes can damage vision on top of introducing several adverse mental health conditions.
Remind your employees to take regular breaks as they work. Ask them to set a timer for every 15 to 30 minutes, so they know when to take a break. To reduce eye strain, advise employees to avoid screens and look out the window or into the distance to help their eyes gently readjust to natural light and refocus.
For physical exercise, ask your employees to do light stretching or walk around for five minutes if they’ve been sitting for too long.
Employees can use regular breaks to take care of small personal tasks, such as having a short conversation to reduce the effects of isolation. Some employees may use their five-minute breaks to clean their workstations or take care of minor tasks around the house.
While this break strategy has proven to reduce stress and help employees relax, not everyone enjoys the idea of taking a break from work to do chores. In any case, it’s good to habitually take breaks to help you unwind, destress, and regain your strength to continue your work.
Concluding Thoughts
At the end of the day, what matters most when it comes to improving work-life balance for remote employees is paying close attention to employees. So much workplace fatigue and frustration can be avoided by simply asking employees how they feel: do they have enough time for themselves or are they burned out?
A healthy work-life balance can’t be easily achieved overnight. Employers must actively promote positive living practices and encourage employees to take good care of both their personal and professional lives.
By using these techniques and developing healthy habits throughout their working hours, employees will easily separate their work from their lives.
