It has been six months since most companies officially sent employees home for what many thought would be a few weeks and has now become months, stretching on for the foreseeable future. The flexibility to work from home has long been part of the trend toward flexible work arrangements aimed at attracting and retaining talent in an ever more competitive market. However, half a year working from home has had the opposite effect on work-life balance for many and instead of feeling less stressed, people are feeling the WFH burnout.
Do you experience the "Sunday night scaries," dreading the thought of another Monday morning? Or count down the hours until you can log off? Or wonder if you will ever find the work-life balance you want and need in this new world of online work? Overwhelmed, burned-out, and tired of Zooming all day, every day, it's easy to throw in the towel and resign yourself that work sucks and that you're stuck in this job forever. There is another option. You can make your current job work for you. Here are the three most important steps you can take to make any job your dream job.
Why is work the number one place where adults make most of their friends? Because consistency is one of the three relationship requirements, and there's nowhere we're more consistent in our lives than where we're paid to show up regularly. Work is to adults as school is to kids: the best place to interact frequently with the same people. But what happens to all those work friendships—whose consistency relied upon sharing a breakroom, sitting beside each other, chatting in the hallway, or connecting briefly after meetings—when so many of us are now working remote?
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies were resistant to implementing remote work for a variety of reasons such as concerns about technology and infrastructure, a lack of trust that employees would get their jobs done, the longstanding (and understandable) bias in favor of face-to-face interactions, or some combination of these factors. However, not only has the COVID-19 pandemic forced many companies to switch to remote work despite their reservations, it's clear at this point that it's going to be very hard to put the genie back in the bottle. Remote work is here to stay, at least partially. By analyzing the pros and cons of remote work we've witnessed over the past few months, we can apply various insights towards maximizing its benefits while minimizing the downsides.
Under any circumstances, managing a remote team requires an over-emphasis on communication, a deep understanding of flexibility, and a variety of ways to maintain touch points with your teammates. Now, with so much uncertainty, fear, and sickness, we need to have even more compassion so that people have time to heal, adjust, and find their anchor within this "new normal."
I feel I'm at my most productive when I am free to travel, learn, and create without the constraints of geography, an office, or a time card. So, when I founded Final Straw just over two years ago, I sought to develop a company culture that inspired people to approach everyday problems with ingenuity, and was determined to create a team that was 100% remote. Initially, there were people who pointed out all of the reasons that a company operating remotely couldn't be successful; however, I knew that I could make the model work.