When Work from Home is No Longer a Perk — Mental Health & Remote Work (5 Mins Read)

There was one thing which was unanimously common to employee wish list across the world- Work From Home. An avalanche of findings suggests that a whopping percentage of employees wanted to “work from home” at least part of the time for the rest of their career. The pandemic, made this wish come true, with the companies across the world unfolding work from home and remote work policies.

But remote work is not exactly what employees thought of in the first place. While, remote work from home offers immediate health benefits for employees during the pandemic in short term, permanently working from home can pose unanticipated mental health consequences and present key challenges that may affect employee engagement, productivity, job satisfaction and mental health.

(Also Read: Are you Ready for Work from Home? 5 Rules that will make you productive)

Companies like Twitter has already extended permanent work from home for all the staff in roles and situation that enables them to work from home. Also as per twitter work from home policy, if such a staff wants to continue to do so forever, they will make it happen. On the other hand companies like Microsoft, are now of opinion that permanently working from home can be damaging for social interaction and mental health for workers.

Mental Health Risks of Remote Work

When home becomes your workplace, it is quite normal that a lot of bandwidth of mental space gets used up as the boundary between work and daily household chores gets blurred. Work stress from work from home and ever-increasing family responsibilities take a toll on the health of many of us.

The mandated remote work elated many of us only to realize how it can easily lead to burnout and isolation. For those of us, who are accustomed to conventional office life, social interactions and water cooler chats at the office, the shift to remote work from home can cause a surprising deterioration of mental health.

Two major mental health risks that emerge out upfront are

1. Loneliness & Isolation
2. Burnout Syndrome

Loneliness & Isolation

Human beings are social creatures and fundamentally hardwired for connection. We need to stay connected, reach out for support when we need it to be optimal. Social distancing and quarantine go against the very nature of human beings.

The stress from social isolation as a result of remote jobs from home increases due to ever-increasing responsibility of dealing with children, helping elders and family, running household errands, and also psychological issues like panic attacks, depression, anxiety, claustrophobia, apart from the uncertainties which come with this frightening pandemic.

Employees, love the very concept of moving out of home, experience change of environment, break the daily home monotony, take coffee & water cooler chat breaks with colleagues. They are now missing communication and connection that comes with regular office life.

The isolation which comes in the wake of COVID-19 is catastrophic. While it is the need of the hour to reset ourselves as the most basic resources like work, relationships, health seem to come under threat, the effects of a pandemic on employees mental health can’t be ignored. Sadly, despite all our connected devices, we are no longer connected.

As mandated work from is becoming a temporary reality, Isolation & Loneliness can slyly attack and can be fatal to employee productivity and engagement as it exacerbates anxiety and depression, posing even a greater challenge for those who live alone.

As per the reports, most of the global population is now experiencing loneliness and isolation with no signs of how long this trend will continue.

How to deal with Loneliness & Isolation

What companies are doing to deal with isolation and loneliness

To alleviate feelings of Social Isolation and Loneliness, many companies are taking the following steps until employees safely return the office in new normal:

1. Virtual Coffee Breaks

Many companies are encouraging virtual coffee breaks during the working hours for their remote teams to foster collaborations and creating a more conducive environment.

2. Water-Cooler Channel:

Some companies are contemplating having a dedicated water cooler channel to encourage breaktime socialisation.

3. Virtual Counselling

Many big corporations are waking up to this problem by hiring mental health counsellors and professionals to deal with social isolation by having it made mandatory for all remote working staff to make themselves available for counselling sessions.

Burnout Syndrome

When the clock hits a particular time in your office, it is the time for pack up. When working from home, the demarcation is not clear as remote workers find themselves working longer hours than those in the office as they constantly feel the pressure to contribute more than their colleagues logging in from the office.

The psyche is “fear of losing a job”. This translates to working more in order to justify their existence. Hence they may feel compelled to work longer hours and prove that they can be productive while working from home.

Adding to this, the frightening pandemic has caused the lines between personal and work life to turn hazy, as the professionals find closing down of the schools, and being with a partner who is also now working from home, as a struggle to segregate responsibilities.

This is causing burnout syndrome. Remote workers are not able to maintain a healthy work-life balance due to compelling carry-over work which spills in their personal lives. This not only means less time for oneself but also for pursuing interests like exercise, reading, gardening etc and more overlapping responsibilities. Adding to this is fear of virus contaminations, drowning economy, and mixing of employment crisis and medical crisis which only one is question preoccupying majority of our subconscious- what will happen next? This is causing total exhaustion and burnout.

How to deal with the Burnout Syndrome

1. Take initiative in maintaining wellbeing within your home workspace. This includes creating a comfortable and private workplace in your home dedicated specifically for work
2. Wherever possible try to incorporate exercise breaks and social interaction into your daily routine to break the feeling of burnout.
3. Make sure to deliberately open and close the day. Since you are not commuting ‘to and fro’ from home to office, which indicates clear boundaries of start and closure of your workday, opening and closing your work from home days is a good idea to keep you away from dragging the work to your bedroom or dining room.
4. Thrive to achieve Work from Home “Work-Life Balance”. Maintain a healthy work-life balance the way you aim to do while in your actual office.
5. Take simple steps like turning off email notifications before and after working hours and maintain a normal sleep schedule will help you maintain a feeling of normalcy.

Despite the challenges of Isolation & Burnout, remote work can be very rewarding if we are able to handle these common issues. It is important to enjoy the flexibility, autonomy and the choice to work from home at the comfort of our couch while making sure to be productive and focussed towards our work. Do not forget to enjoy life outside the boundaries of your work and reap the best of any given situation.

Originally published at https://theeasywisdom.com on June 23, 2020.