Work Life Balance for Remote Employees

In this article, I will discuss remote employees, challenges often faced by remote employees that affect their work life balance, and few solutions that can be considered to address the challenges. So, who is a remote employee? There are a lot of ways to define “Remote” employees. In this context, employee can mean a worker, contractor or vendor providing a service. The general impression of remote employees is that the employee chose to work from home. However, remote employees may be working from different office locations within the same town, city, state, country or even internationally. Employees working in field vs corporate office, healthcare employees visiting doctors’ offices, nurses and pharmacists visiting patients on duty, people working in sales division visiting their vendors, or even healthcare employees working different shifts, can be considered as remote employees. 

What are a few challenges faced by remote employees today? The work hours for these employees are usually either staggered through the day or a little inconvenient, non-stop emails and messages, lack of physical schedule, etc. These employees are either compromising on family events to accommodate to the “mother ship” schedule or missing out on communication within the teams at work. In these cases, work life balance becomes the key for improved productivity and employee retention. The company culture that takes care of such issues strategically becomes successful while those that ignore it end up building a sense of negativity towards the company. Work life balance can be affected by several factors like rigid or extended work hours, teams distributed across different time zones, number of live meetings during a given week, lack of communication on time, heavy workload with a smaller number of employees, feeling of lack of recognition for their work etc. This results in working long hours, stress, unable to focus on personal priorities and families, etc. Lot of times, I have heard people say, “I was working long hours and putting in so much effort to thrive at work. When I look back, I realized, several personal priorities have been ignored.” Why do we have to look back? Why can’t we manage our time better to take care of our priorities while thriving at work in the present? Is there anything at work that can be changed to better align with the employee’s priorities? 

Some obvious possibilities are: 

1. Reducing the number of live meetings which enables us to focus on meeting the deadlines.  

2. Meet without meeting. Rather than waiting for a time that works for the entire team, come up with ways to keep the team updated and accomplish outcomes.  

3. Getting to know the team better so that the team members can help each other out.  

4. Recognizing and rewarding the team member.  

Engagement platforms (e.g., ReTeam) provide solutions for the above-mentioned possibilities. They allow team members, teams within an organization as well as external teams to connect with each other and foster a sense of belonging that is above and beyond messaging and meetings. They help reduce the need for live meetings, allowing employees to work on their preferred schedule. A perfect blend of time for undisturbed work and the time to connect with respective teams allows teams to feel a sense of accomplishment on a regular basis. Using these platforms, teams can stay informed and up to date. They can celebrate teams and team members’ success regularly, which goes a long way towards building trust and improving engagement. Meetings when they do happen are often quick and action items and notes can be captured instantly without having to wait for a designated scribe to send in those over time. Capturing, developing, and tracking innovative ideas is quick and easy using engagement platforms. Assigning tasks and holding employees accountable also becomes easy with these engagement platforms. 

I have come across several leaders that do not have time to get through their email inbox daily. Reduced dependency on emails is important to stay organized and productive.  The email chains can be replaced by simpler and faster methods of communication within and across organizations. 

Leaders also try a variety of ways to stay in touch with their teams often with cumbersome methods. A simplified check-in process (within the platform) helps leaders to keep a pulse on their employees and step in where help or their follow up is required. 

Science has proven that remote teams using such engagement platforms have significantly improved their team participation, communication, inclusiveness, innovation and collaboration, all characteristics of good engagement. Engaged teams exhibit self-motivation which in turn results in increased quality and productivity. 

Companies that embrace and foster innovative culture leveraging remote workers, breaking away from legacy “meet to meet” culture, reduce dependency on emails, thrive in today’s rapidly changing world. Work life balance is a very essential part of work that is needed for employee wellbeing, which is essential in creating healthy and high performing teams. Healthy and high performing teams increase productivity and improve retention within a company.