Top 4 Biggest Challenges of Working from Home in 2021

Top 4 Biggest Challenges of Working from Home in 2021

Top 4 biggest challenges of working from home in 2021. How employers can meet the challenges of remote work and help employees adapt to working from home.

Permanent remote work arrangements are expected to double from 16.4 percent in early 2020 to 34.4 percent in 2021, according to a study by Enterprise Technology Research.

But adapting to working from home continues to be a challenging process, evidenced by popular searches like “how to stay focused working from home” and “tips for working from home with kids.”

Transitioning to remote work is a massive undertaking that’s all the more complicated when it occurs overnight in response to a global pandemic. Organizations expanding remote work capabilities in 2021 must address the biggest pitfalls of working from home for a successful endeavor. 

Top 4 Biggest Challenges of Working from Home in 2021

Minimizing Distractions at Home

Distractions are plentiful at home. Employees lose focus because of family members, pets, chores, construction, their phones, televisions and so much more. It’s important to adapt a routine that’s conducive to remote work by identifying and working around major distractions. Maybe it’s as simple as setting a specific day or time to do chores, or setting up a workspace in a bedroom to avoid high traffic areas like the living room and kitchen. 

Some employees don’t have home office equipment and could be distracted by their limited setup. Nearly 65 percent of people working from home due to the coronavirus reported new physical woes including “tech neck” and lower back pain, according to findings published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Employers recognized this distraction and barrier to productivity as well as wellness and allowed workers to start expensing desks, chairs and computers or instituted allowances for WiFi and phone costs

Employers should check in with employees when adapting to remote work to see how they’re adjusting to the new routine and if they have the right equipment to get the job done at home.

Supporting Mental Health and Financial Wellness

Supporting Remote Worker Mental Health

Social isolation has been linked to depression, poor sleep quality, impaired executive function, accelerated cognitive decline, poor cardiovascular function and imparied immunity, according to the American Psychological Association. Social isolation, as well as anxiety about the virus and the uncertainty of the economy are just a few of the mental health challenges employees are experiencing that could be impacting their performance or productivity at work.

Employers can help by asking workers how they’re doing in general when conducting performance check-ins and by reminding them or even emphasizing the mental health benefits and perks that might be available, like teletherapy or mental health days.

Supporting Employee Financial Wellness

Financial stress costs employers $2,169 in lost productivity and absenteeism per employee, according to research by John Hancock. Absenteeism due to financial stress more than doubled from 2019 to 2020 and 43 percent of workers spend time on their finances during work hours. 

Nearly 60 percent of employees are feeling more financial stress during the COVID-19 pandemic than before it began. Close to 80 percent are worried about economic conditions, over 70 percent are worried about not having enough retirement savings and 22 percent have dipped into their emergency savings. 

Supporting employee financial wellness in a remote work environment is all about finding the right financial wellness program for your workforce. Best Money Moves has all the tools and features employees need to assess their financial situations; budget for monthly expenses, pay down debt, plan for emergencies, save for retirement and diversify their portfolios. It has a library of over 800 articles, videos and calculators, resources that employees can use to educate themselves about everything from investing in the stock market to co-signing loans to buying their first homes. Our team of Money Coaches, trained professional financial counselors, are ready to give employees additional financial guidance whenever they need it.

If you want to learn more about how Best Money Moves can bring financial wellness to your company download our whitepapers and sign up for a demonstration here.

Creating a Connect Culture

One of the most challenging parts of adapting to working from home is figuring out how to stay connected as a team. Over 40 percent of employees struggled with group work, 28 percent had a hard time with customer interactions, 18 percent found information gathering straining and 14 percent had a tough time with task execution when working remotely during COVID-19, according to research by Ring Central. More than half of employees said their companies did not make significant attempts to help them collaborate remotely, which made collaboration more difficult than in a physical office.

Ring Central found that 34 percent of employees working at companies that foster a connected culture say they’re more productive when working from home. When asked what helped them feel more connected at work, half of employees said that frequent employee communication helps, 26 percent said enhanced collaboration tools, 24 percent said virtual happy hours, 22 percent said peer chats and 15 percent said group video games.

Employers should work with their teams and try different ways of connecting remotely to determine what works best for them.

Flexibility for Parents and Caregivers

Over 60 percent of parents agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic made the 2019-2020 school year extremely stressful for them, according to research by the American Psychological Association. Parents were challenged with setting their kids up for virtual or hybrid learning on top of adjusting to the shift to working from home. 

Employers can better support parents and caregivers by providing more flexibility, whether it’s giving them more control over what they work on, when they work or how they work. Flexibility allows people to do their jobs while wrestling with new stressors and responsibilities, such as a child’s education or caring for an aging parent.

Meeting the Challenges of Working from Home During COVID-19 in 2021

These are the four biggest challenges of working from home in 2021: minimizing distractions, supporting employee wellness, creating a connected culture and providing flexibility for parents and caregivers. But they aren’t the only challenges employers will face adapting to a remote workforce. Employers will need to digitize HR functions and rethink benefits and perks that worked well in a physical workplace (such as staff lunch, snacks, gym memberships) to create a remote employee experience that improves productivity, retention and recruitment. 

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3 Ways to Reduce Employee Burnout in 2021

3 Ways to Reduce Employee Burnout in 2021

3 ways to reduce employee burnout in 2021. How to spot the symptoms of employee burnout and minimize its impact on your business.

An alarming 76 percent of U.S. employees are currently experiencing burnout, according to new research by Spring Health. 

“The events of 2020 put a tremendous amount of pressure on U.S. employees — especially those who are raising children or taking care of elderly loved ones,” said Dr. Millard Brown, senior vice president of Medical Affairs at Spring Health. “Burnout is extremely costly for organizations, so it’s imperative that leaders take steps now to reduce and manage burnout symptoms for their workforce.”

Employers can minimize the impact of employee burnout by spotting symptoms early and making changes in workplace culture or employee benefits offerings.

3 Ways to Reduce Employee Burnout in 2021

Spotting the Symptoms of Employee Burnout

The first step to reducing employee burnout is spotting the primary symptoms including exhaustion, feeling negative, cynical or detached from work, reduced productivity and poor work performance. Employee burnout is often reached after an extended period of high stress.

“Employee burnout can present on a spectrum,” said Dr. Brown. “At its earliest stages, burnout can be mobilized more easily. Whether it’s offering more flexible work schedules for caretakers or rebalancing workloads that have been skewed by layoffs, employers have a lot of opportunities to support their team members without sacrificing larger organizational goals. Once an employee reaches the complete burnout stage, though, recovery can become a challenging and long-term process that significantly disrupts both the employee’s life and the organization’s efficacy.”

Making Changes to Workplace Culture to Reduce Employee Burnout

Almost a third of employees experiencing burnout say that increased responsibilities at work contributed to their burnout and that reducing the number of hours spent working would help them reduce or avoid burnout altogether. Over 25 percent of employees say having a supportive and understanding manager at work would also help them to reduce and avoid burnout. 

Training supervisors to lead with empathy, spot the signs of burnout and respond effectively by supporting the employee and working to find reasonable solutions can make a huge impact in reducing employee burnout.

Making Changes to Employee Benefits to Reduce Employee Burnout

Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. employees believe that better mental health-related policies at work would help them avoid or reduce burnout. Mental health benefits can help employees reduce stress and build emotional resiliency that can help them through times of crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic uncertainty that followed.

Another 30 percent of workers said receiving more paid time off from their employer would assist them in avoiding or reducing burnout. Paid time off allows employees to take time off when they need it, for whatever reason, and being able to split paid time off between vacation days, sick time and mental health days could help employees reduce and avoid burnout.

Employers who want to reduce the negative impact of employee burnout and get back to the business at hand should train supervisors to spot the symptoms and react accordingly by reassessing workloads and looking to changes to office culture or benefits offerings that could be advantageous.

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3 Tips for Working From Home During COVID-19

3 Tips for Working From Home During COVID-19

3 tips for working from home during COVID-19. These are three best practices for organizations with employees working from home during the coronavirus pandemic.

This is just the beginning of the work from home world if employees have any say in the matter.

Seventy percent of full-time employees are working from home during COVID-19 and 75 percent of them say they’re equally or more productive now than they were at the office, according to research by Owl Labs.

Nearly 80 percent of employees agree having the option to work from home after the pandemic is over would make them happier, so much so that 1 in 2 workers wouldn’t return to jobs that don’t offer some form of remote work. After 2020, 80 percent of employees expect to work from home at least 3 times a week. 

But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a learning curve adjusting to a remote work landscape. Employees have struggled with taking time off when working from home, some workers feel inundated with daily meetings and some have had trouble finding work-life balance when they’re both in the same space. 

3 Tips for Working From Home During COVID-19

Here are our top three tips for organizations working from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond:

WFH Tip #1: Build a Flexible Routine

Working from home inevitably requires employees to adopt a new routine. They no longer wake up, prep to leave the home and commute to work. While they’re glad to be saving 40 minutes of daily commuting they are missing out on that time to get into the working mindset. 

For the 25 percent of employees who told Recognize Services Inc that motivating themselves was one of the top challenges of working from home, building a flexible routine can help. 

It’s tempting to wake up just a few minutes before logging into work, especially for employees who consider themselves night owls, but it’s important they give themselves time to wake up, have coffee, jog, eat breakfast, journal, do yoga, listen to some music or anything else that helps them ease into the day. 

Breaks are also an essential part of the workday and much easier to enforce in a physical workplace. A survey by OnePoll on behalf of Freshly found that 60 percent of workers felt guilty taking any type of break, including lunch, when working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Employers should be clear about how breaks work when employees are working from home and emphatically encourage them to take them. Regular breaks not only help reduce the risk of burnout they help keep employees engaged and productive, benefitting job satisfaction and retention. 

WFH Tip #2: Stay Connected with Coworkers and Establish Remote Meeting Etiquette

Employers have leaned on virtual meetings to keep the team connected and on task when working from home, but employees are tired of having their days loaded with them. 

Eighty percent of employees agree that there should be one day a week with no meetings at all, according to Owl Labs. Another 74 percent agreed that their organization should have ‘core hours’ meaning that there are four hours a day where employees are available to colleagues and then they work on their own schedule for the rest of the time.

Whether it’s restricting meetings on a certain day or during certain hours, it’d be helpful for employees if meetings were less frequent and more meaningful so they can get back to the task at hand.

WFH Tip #3: Prioritize Work-Life Balance When Working From Home

Employees have found themselves working more and taking less time off when working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The average workweek increased by nearly 40 percent during COVID-19, with workers clocking in an additional 15 hours per week, according to research by NordVPN. Another survey by Monster found that despite 69 percent of employees experiencing symptoms of burnout, 59 percent of employees took less time off than they normally would and 42 percent didn’t plan to take any time off to decompress when working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. 

The survey by OnePoll on behalf of Freshly found that 65 percent of employees feel exhausted by the end of the day because they have the demands of work and a family under the same roof. 

Employees who want to continue working remotely need to prioritize work-life balance. It’s exceptionally difficult when kids are home for virtual learning, but there are a few ways employees can strike a balance between their work life and home life, even if they share the same space. Setting a firm time to stop working whenever possible and turning off work notifications if employees aren’t on call is a great way to start creating some boundaries, along with building in those breaks we mentioned earlier in this post. 

Employers can help employees prioritize work-life balance by encouraging them to make use of their time off and asking them if there are any challenges they can help them with. Maybe parents are struggling to make meetings scheduled during a time they need to switch their kids to a new assignment or it’d make a big difference if they could log on and off an hour earlier so they could spend more time making dinner with their family. Those are two relatively simple yet meaningful accommodations employers could take into consideration to help employees make the most of their time at and away from work.

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Top HR Challenges in 2021 and How to Overcome Them

Top HR Challenges in 2021 and How to Overcome Them

Top HR challenges in 2021 and how to overcome them. The most pressing issues in human resource management and what organizations can do about them.

Employers made difficult decisions to navigate COVID-19 in 2020 but it’s unclear what the lasting impact of those changes will be.

A new report by Lattice, The State of People Strategy: The New World of Work, asked HR leaders what their most crucial initiatives are for the 12 months ahead and what challenges they’re most concerned about.

Top HR Challenges in 2021 and How to Overcome Them

HR leaders said their most important initiatives in the next 12 months are: 

  • 48 percent said employee engagement
  • 46 percent said training and enabling managers
  • 44 percent said diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) programs
  • 37 percent said learning and development 
  • 33 percent said performance management

Most of these initiatives have to do with adapting procedures and processes established to limit the risk of COVID-19 while remaining operational, with the exception of DE&I programs which have become an organizational priority for many companies after the events of this year underscored the pervasiveness of systemic racism and inequality. 

The top challenges HR teams face are:

  • 58 percent said emotional exhaustion (for themselves or their team members)
  • 54 percent said an overwhelming number of projects and responsibilities
  • 51 percent said employee morale/retention
  • 43 percent said budget constraints
  • 29 percent said low perceived value of HR’s worth in an organization

Health and wellness programs can help HR teams overcome their challenges in 2021, if they can find the right mix of benefits within their budget constraints. Benefits that help employees improve aspects of their overall health, like mental health benefits and financial wellness programs, can build resilience and help employees both manage and avoid exhaustion and burnout. 

Communication is going to be critical to organizational success next year, especially as many workplaces plan to continue working remotely indefinitely. Finding the right balance between professional check-ins where supervisors touch base with employees’ workloads, productivity and engagement are going to be just as important as personal check-ins where supervisors ask employees how they’re doing with everything going on and encourage them to ask for support when they need it. 

The businesses that are most adaptive and communicative stand to come out of 2021 on top. Effective HR teams focused on their most important initiatives and highly aware of the challenges they’ll face will help their organizations beat their business goals in the new year.

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Reducing Employee Burnout During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Reducing Employee Burnout During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Reducing employee burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. What’s driving employee burnout during COVID-19 and what employers can do about it.

Employee burnout has skyrocketed to 58 percent, according to research by Eagle Hill Consulting. It’s up from 45 percent in the early days of the pandemic and over a third of workers attribute their burnout to circumstances related to COVID-19, up from 25 percent in April.

“This level of burnout is problematic and could increase as millions of employees continue to work from home, and many schools remain unable to fully open. We’re in this pandemic for the long haul, and employers have got to find a way to make workloads sustainable for employees and better equip managers to lead. Otherwise, companies risk harming their bottom line and brand,” said Melissa Jezior, president and chief executive officer of Eagle Hill Consulting.

Reducing Employee Burnout During the COVID-19 Pandemic

These are the top five drivers of employee burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic that Eagle Hill Consulting identified in their recent research:

  • 47 percent of employees say their burnt out from their workload.
  • 39 percent say it’s from balancing work and their personal life.
  • 37 percent say it stems from a lack of communication, feedback and support.
  • 30 percent say they’re under time pressures and expectations are unclear.
  • 28 percent point to performance expectations.

Research from Yale University found that employees experiencing burnout reported high demands and high resources while employees who were ‘optimally’ engaged reported low to moderate demands and high resources. ‘Optimally’ engaged employees had support from their supervisors through rewards and received recognition without having to struggle with cumbersome bureaucracy, demands for concentration, or heavy workloads. 

Many organizations are adapting to remote workforces during the pandemic and it’s important that they manage their expectations during the transition and provide workers with resources they need to thrive in a work-from-home environment.  

Employers that want to reduce the negative impact employee burnout has on productivity, employee engagement, job satisfaction and rentention should monitor workloads and common signs of burnout (exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, inability to keep up with daily tasks) to find out when it’s time to dial demands back and expand resources. The addition of wellness programs can ease stress and help employees better maintain a work-life balance, but if demands are too high employees will still burnout.

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