Helping Your Remote Employees Preserve Work-Life Harmony

In the midst of COVID-19 and increased remote workforces, it’s difficult to try and balance your work and personal life. Add in a team of people whom you need to be motivated and engaged; it can seem quite impossible. Employees today have to not only learn how to juggle multiple tasks while working from home but also, find the healthy balance of having a social life and attending to their own self-care.

There’s no uniformity among your employees on how they work best. For example, some employees enjoy integrating their work life into their personal life. These employees have no trouble monitoring their email inbox or working on a project as they listen to their favorite  podcast or cook dinner. Whereas, others may find it impossible to shut down at the end of the day. Regardless of personality type, maintaining that motivation to work during the day, cutting out time-consuming distractions, and dividing work from personal lives is essential for your employees to succeed.

Interestingly enough, 61% of employees find themselves more productive when working from home. Those distractions at home, in essence, are nowhere near as time-consuming as those many employees find at the office. So if it’s beneficial to work from home, is the work-life balance as important as we’ve made it become?

Why Does Remote Work-Life Balance Matter for Productivity?

Unlike working in a shared office space, managers can’t monitor, motivate, or reinforce the work-life balance as quickly when the team is dispersed and disconnected in their respective homes.

Productivity itself can also be more challenging to track and analyze, but it’s critical wherever you are that a happy team is a functional one.

Happiness and purpose remain supreme as essential variables for the measurement of function– something that is achieved through communication, recognition, and, of course, the support of a healthy work-life balance. Consistency is also a factor when it comes to preserving a work-life balance among remote employees – something that’s a little harder to maintain remotely but highly rewarding when accomplished.

 Many Americans’ enforcement to work from home over the past several months has opened up a few doors to many employees who feel that their work-life balance was lacking. Two-thirds of the countries’ employees considered switching jobs to one that offered more flexibility. Now that the country has had the idea of a flexible work schedule thrust upon us, we might as well, take the opportunity to find out if this new productivity mode could be something we can stick to effectively.

Several methods and mindsets promote productivity while still providing your team with a functional work-life balance.

Re-connect to Purpose

There can be a disconnect from an employers’ purpose when the team is at home instead of an office setting where those goals are often reinforced. Integrating an employee recognition program across your organization not only motivates your employees to succeed, but it also connects them to your core values and instills a sense of community and pride.

Read More: The Power of ‘Proud’ 

Pair recognition with dynamic scheduling and communication platforms and your team will have the structure and connection they need to succeed.

 Stay Connected

Don’t forget to check-in with each team member as you would in an office space. Find out where they require mentorship or guidance and whether they require less or more challenging tasks to complete. Even if you’re calling up to “chat” with a team member, it gives them a connection to their role, reminds them that you’re still there doing the “managing” they depend on and that you care about their mental health as well as their work.

Keep Up the Recognition Regardless of Where Your Team Works

At the end of each workday, recognize your team for a productive day, and provide individual achievements. Then, tell them to enjoy the rest of the evening. Often, employees can feel compelled to keep working because they don’t think they did enough or want to get a head start tomorrow. By vocalizing their need to relax, you can help rid some of that guilt and allow your team members – and yourself – to switch off the workday and focus on your personal lives when appropriate.

Striving to achieve a healthy work-life balance is now a new reality remote employees have to face. Employers need to step into their employees’ shoes and develop a new sense of care in understanding these changes. All hope is not lost when it comes to maintaining employee motivation and engagement; this new healthy balance between work and life only fortifies your employees’ desire to work even harder for their company while taking care of their emotional and mental needs as well.