Combat Remote Work Burnout with These Simple Tips

Have a Plan

Each department should have a way to keep track of their remote work employees. Set up a weekly video check-in with their direct supervisor to make sure they have everything they need and can update the department on their progress. Communicate your plan clearly and simply. The reassurance that you are thinking ahead can make a big difference in the day to day. 

Make Sure Employees are Equipped with All the Resources They Need

Can your employees easily access corporate information and resources? If not you’ll have an uphill battle with enabling remote work. You may not be fully aware of what your team needs until you ask them. Check-in through a survey or by having managers reach out directly. You may find that you need to provide some physical equipment items to your teams like headsets for peripherals like mice, keyboards, or scanners. In addition to physical resources, it’s important to ensure you have adequate licenses for cloud-based software like Microsoft office.  Be accommodating when employees ask for help. Allowing a bit more flexibility and going out of your way to make things easier for your team could is a sure way to invest in your company’s success.  

Make Collaborating with Colleagues Easier

Can your employees easily get in touch with one another and share work or have a video chat? What about managing tasks and schedules? Being able to work together even when you’re not sharing the same space is vital. There are tons of free apps available for task management, but ideally, your company should be leading the way in creating a consistent plan for collaboration and communication. This means having centralized, secure access to documents, a secure video chat platform, and procedures around in and out of office work. 

Reduced Public Office Hours or More Flexible Schedules

When possible reducing public office hours may make balancing work and home life a little easier for your employees. Although it’s not always a viable solution depending on your industry, cutting the customer-facing part of the day a bit short gives your team the time to catch up on the back-end of the business. Similarly, allowing more flexibility in the times your employees’ clock in or clock out can help them better balance home life, especially if they are also trying to support their children through e-learning. Giving employees the autonomy to define their work hours shows trust and allows your team to better focus when they are on the clock by allowing them the flexibility they need. 

Give Back Time

Many top companies encourage creativity by giving employees some of their time back as an opportunity to innovate. Consider defining a few hours each week as a paid opportunity to innovate, research, and explore. This doesn’t work for every job position but you never know what sorts of forward-thinking ideas may result. This idea is inspired by the 20% project, an initiative where company employees are allocated twenty-percent of their paid work time to pursue personal projects. The objective of the program is to inspire innovation and ultimately increase company potential. Major players like 3M, Google, and Pixar have all implemented versions of this concept and credit it with increased morale and resulting in unique, profitable outcomes.