10 Tips to Reduce Burnout When Working Remotely
Guest Post by Aanya Rachel
Although remote working arrangements are adopted by many companies around the world for the benefits it offers, it is important to understand the potential downsides it brings along.
Remote working can lead to loneliness and social isolation, lack of motivation, decreased work-life balance, and most importantly, cause stress and burnout.
Burnout can adversely impact your business, causing decreased employee satisfaction, lowered productivity, and higher turnover.
According to Zippia, 86% of remote employees experience burnout and an astonishing 51% of them feel they do not have any support from their employers to deal with burnout issues.
In this post, we will explore ten ways to reduce burnout among remote employees and increase workforce productivity.
1. Sign Up for a Coworking Space Membership
Coworking spaces offer multiple features, such as a professional work environment, ergonomic seating, meeting rooms, break zones, and more that encourage remote employees to do their best work.
It boosts employee wellness and engagement in various ways.
So, allowing your remote team to work in collaborative shared workspaces increases productivity, reduces burnout, and builds a happy team.
If your employees work from home, encourage them to move out and work in shared office spaces that offer advanced amenities and immense networking opportunities.
This break from their home offices will refresh their minds and foster new ideas and creativity. Leveraging coworking spaces introduces your remote employees to a work routine and helps achieve a better work-life balance.
2. Offer Flexible Working Schedules
Offer remote employees more flexibility in terms of work hours and schedules than the traditional 9-to-5 jobs.
Let them choose their work hours based on convenience and create an optimized schedule.
This will ensure more productive periods while reducing stress and burnout at work.
Encourage remote employees to stick to a set work schedule every day and prevent them from working after office hours to finish their tasks.
They must plan their days to carve out some focused time for working on important projects without distractions.
Avoid micromanaging employees until the last minute of the day and offer them control over their time.
Remember your remote employees must never feel that they are constantly under the radar.
3. Keep Workplace Burnout under Control
Promote better work-life balance among your remote workforce and make it a priority in your business.
Encourage them to establish routines that differentiate work and non-work periods, thereby creating boundaries between work and personal lives.
This clear separation of work and personal hours will lead to happy employees.
Identify the team members' potential and allocate only those number of tasks they have the bandwidth for.
Note that your employees might find it difficult to complete several tasks which could lead to loss of productivity and burnout.
Similarly, avoid sending emails to them outside of office hours, on weekends, and on holidays. However, exceptions can be made in case your message is truly urgent.
Lastly, give your employees complete autonomy to make decisions and take desired actions to finish their work.
Make them feel more invested in the company's success and appreciate their efforts. This will make them feel valued and satisfied in their jobs.
4. Simplify Communication
Ensure seamless communication among your remote employees so that they get to know each other and collaborate extensively to finish their work.
Staying connected to the team members can reduce the feelings of isolation and FOMO that arises when working remotely.
Leverage instant messaging tools like Slack to encourage better conversations.
Boost team collaboration with regular standups, video calls, and more to convey work expectations and deadlines, share challenges and bottlenecks, and provide feedback.
Apart from work-related conversations, create a casual conversation channel where employees can indulge in light chats, send funny memes, share videos, and more to ease their stress.
Introduce a buddy system that assigns an accountability buddy to remote employees who encourages them to complete their tasks, offers solutions to their challenges, and keeps them on top of their assignments.
5. Organize Mindful Meetings
Meetings consume a significant amount of time for remote employees thereby decreasing the time available to do productive work.
Did you know unproductive meetings consume an average of 31 hours of remote workers' time? This meeting time could add to the employee's fatigue and burnout.
Organizing mindful team meetings can make your remote team more productive, short, and effective.
Understand the meeting agenda in advance and schedule meetings only when they are necessary.
If a meeting can be replaced with an email or a quick chat, do not hesitate to do so.
Keep the meeting discussions concise and do not stray away from the main topic.
Create an interactive meeting environment to encourage every team member to participate and share their thoughts.
For example, create polls to capture employees' feedback, include visual elements to keep them engaged, and more.
6. Invest in Productivity Tools
Boost your remote team's contributions by incorporating productivity tools to manage and monitor all the tasks in an accessible manner.
Streamline your organizational processes with various tools that are designed to simplify work for your employees and deliver excellent results.
Leverage project management software like Trello to assign tasks to your remote team and monitor their progress.
Use a meeting scheduling tool like CalendarHero to schedule meetings efficiently and automate the entire meeting workflow.
Invest in cloud storage services like Google Drive to store all work-related files and assets online and retrieve them in just a few clicks.
Similarly, use the power of AI, machine learning, and automation to automate repetitive tasks and complete them without any manual intervention.
7. Encourage Remote Employees to Take Short Breaks
Working remotely does not necessarily mean your team members have to stay glued to their desks.
Ask your employees to set time aside for regular breaks.
This helps them minimize stress, avoid burnout, and stay productive.
Small breaks throughout the workday improve your remote team's ability to concentrate on their tasks and accomplish more in less time.
Encourage them to plan out their work days including the break times.
Blocking out the break time on work calendars is ideal for remote employees as it informs their availability to other team members.
Ask employees to step away from their desks during break times and use this time to read a book, focus on a hobby, or simply take a quick walk.
This will clear their minds and boost their energy and mood. Your employees also can leverage the Pomodoro Technique to take control of their time and manage their work better.
8. Offer Opportunities to Network with Like-Minded Individuals
Encourage your remote employees to dedicate some time to internal and external networking to form connections and nurture strong business relationships.
This will take away the feelings of social isolation and loneliness from remote employees.
Organize networking events, annual retreats, workshops, and more to motivate your remote employees to go social.
Your remote employees can connect with like-minded individuals in person or online and engage them in interesting conversations for learning and knowledge sharing.
Create a positive work environment that is motivating, fun, and engaging.
Promote your workplace culture in which help is asked for and offered without any judgment.
Your remote employees must not hesitate to ask for help when they need it.
Encourage them to speak to their managers in case they need assistance in completing their tasks or an extension in the deadline.
If your remote employees are working from a coworking space, motivate them to be active participants in the coworking community.
These coworking spaces organize events regularly to foster communication among their members and build lasting relationships.
9. Implement an Employee Well-Being Program
Well-being programs provide employees with social support, incentives, tools, and privacy to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
It improves the employees' physical and mental health, thereby decreasing stress and burnout and ensuring higher productivity.
Identify the challenges your employees are currently facing and implement an employee well-being program in your organization to make them healthy and happy.
Introduce a day off after project completion, allocate realistic deadlines, offer support and training, and more.
Provide them with a healthy living budget to cover the costs of healthy food, gym/yoga memberships, app subscriptions, and other related expenses.
10. Organize Fun Virtual Events
Around 67% of employees revealed that they found it difficult to make friends and maintain relationships with work colleagues due to remote working.
Hence, dedicate some time and effort to promote meaningful socializing among remote employees and lift their spirits.
Host exciting events and team-building activities to engage your employees.
Organize various fun events, such as virtual coffee breaks, online games, happy hours, watch parties, virtual art sessions, and more to reduce employee stress and boost camaraderie among your remote team members.
This will bring your entire team together irrespective of their location and foster positive company culture.
Besides socializing, invest in de-stressing activities, such as yoga, meditation, aromatherapy, journaling, and more to help them restore peace and calm to their chaotic lives.
Wrapping Up
Reducing burnout when working remotely is crucial for a productive workforce.
By following the tips we mentioned in this post, you can mitigate the major negative impact of remote working i.e. burnout, and ensure outstanding productivity.
AUTHOR BIO
Aanya Rachel is the Content Manager at The Address, a coworking space in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. She’s passionate about sharing her knowledge, experience, and extensive research in this field. She writes on various topics related to coworking, the growth of remote workers, digital marketing, startups, and real estate.