The jury is still out regarding the degree to which burnout affects these two categories of remote workers or why it seems like remote workers are more liable to experience burnout. By taking steps to prevent burnout, individuals can reap the benefits of remote work while maintaining their physical, emotional, and mental well-being. With the right strategies in place, remote work can be a fulfilling and sustainable way of working.
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‘Zoom fatigue’ is a common struggle for remote workers. Here’s how to handle it, according to experts
I actually have a note permanently on my laptop with the reminder, “Pick up the phone and call! ” This has done wonders to help our team feel connected and engaged with one another. Dr. Pallavi Singh is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK. Her research interest includes environmental education in schools, and higher education institutions, sustainable consumption in families, socialization theory, green consumer behaviour and child influence in family purchase decision making. Her work has been published in leading marketing journals such as Journal of Business Research, Technology Forecasting and Social Change, International Journal of Market Research, and Journal of Marketing Communication.
This way of working makes it too easy to blur the work and home boundaries until you find yourself with WFH burnout or Zoom fatigue. Having limited access to immediate guidance or feedback from a manager can cause stress to remote employees. A 2022 report by the brand-building service provider Buffer shows that 17% of the 2,000 remote workers they interviewed experience difficulties with collaboration and communication in a remote work setting, making this a relatively common issue. With an in-person office, you can walk down the hall and poke your head into someone’s office. It’s why many employers view hosting regular virtual meetings as essential to efficient communication.
Even beyond the workplace, Elliott noted that people are using video in more personal contexts than ever before, such as sharing reels on social media and calling loved ones on FaceTime. “As social beings, we’re highly attuned to these cues, and it takes more work for us to look for and process them in the virtual environment, leading to the fatigue we experience.” If your burnout is affecting your mental health and relationships, talking to a well-trained therapist can help you put the problems in the past. With a caring counselor using evidence-based psychological treatments, you can deal not only with the WFH burnout but also with any related issues.
Leaders must remain vigilant for signs such as increased absenteeism, a decline in communication frequency, and a noticeable drop in engagement during virtual meetings. By recognizing these fatigue indicators early, teams can implement supportive strategies to rejuvenate their workforce and foster a healthier work environment. The shift to remote work has transformed not just our workplaces but also the mental landscapes of employees across the globe. According to a remote work fatigue Gallup survey, over 40% of remote workers reported feeling emotionally exhausted, leading to a significant 20% increase in their perception of stress. However, on the other side of the coin, a study conducted by Buffer revealed that 98% of remote workers would like to continue working remotely for the rest of their careers, indicating a complex interplay between autonomy and isolation.
STUDY LIMITATIONS
To defeat WFH burnout, organizations need to understand the reality of the problems leading to WFH burnout to survive and thrive in our new world. Otherwise, using office-style culture to conduct virtual work is simply forcing a square peg into a round hole, leading many staff to burn out. The solitude of remote work may be taking a toll, according to a new study of more than 3,300 office workers around the globe conducted by the commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle. The survey shows that the loss of face-to-face interaction among office workers has led to dips in emotional engagement. What’s more, that loss of interpersonal interaction may be a strong driver for many to return to the office, says Dan Adamski, senior managing director at JLL.
Creating Boundaries: The Importance of Personal Space
- Nevertheless, remote work was originally shaped by practices embedded in an organisational setting, which traditionally gave users time to adapt to new technologies or procedures.
- Sarah was able to balance her troubled load during her peak performance hours, resulting in a remarkable 40% increase in her productivity.
- As deadlines loom, her performance dips, creative ideas dry up, and the once-vibrant team interactions become increasingly muted, signaling that something deeper may be wrong.
- We argue that technostress, as discussed in the IS literature (Tarafdar et al., 2007, Tarafdar et al., 2010, Tarafdar et al., 2015), can be separated from the types of technostress individuals experience due to excessive use of and exposure to social media-based platforms.
- While there is no way around video conferencing in a virtual workplace, there are ways that you can make the experience less draining for your staff.
- Moreover, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into workplace dynamics offers an innovative approach to supporting work-life balance.
COVID-19 working arrangements remotely led to feelings of depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, role stress, and overload, reduced personal accomplishment, and job burnout, increasing turnover intentions. Excessive work overload had, as a consequence, staff stress, emotional draining, professional burnout, and employee turnover. Collaborative remote workplaces and coherent organizational resources optimized work engagement and job performance, decreasing cognitive and emotional demands, behavioral stress, time pressure, and professional requirements. Stress-related mental health issues and perceived levels of physical and cognitive burnout affected job satisfaction and the work–life balance. Remote workers struggled with occupational burnout, daily job stressors, emotional labor, and work–life balance issues.
- The data were analysed following the partial least squares (PLS) method and SmartPLS 3.3.2 (Ringle et al., 2015).
- It may take a few meetings to get the cadence, but attendees will appreciate getting more time back on their schedule.
- This narrative resonates with many as teams operate in a constant ‘always-on’ culture, making it essential for leaders to recognize the signs of fatigue.
- Mental and emotional stress related to increased job demands and workload reduced employee motivation and diminished workplace wellbeing.
Results also show that during the crisis period – where individuals experience a sudden increase in technology use for both work and personal purposes – the increased intensity, intrusion, and influx of technology has worked as an antecedent/ stressor for both WTPS and PTPS. Moderation effect of remote work experience before COVID-19 on impact of increase use of personal technology on personal platform technostress. As a psychological reaction to technostress, perceived tiredness, and a feeling of being overwhelmed has been studied as burnout in the work-related technostress literature (Maier et al., 2019) or exhaustion in the social media-related technostress literature (Cao & Sun, 2018). Subjective wellbeing in the context of individual psychology refers to feelings such as happiness and a positive emotional state (Litwin & Shiovitz-Ezra, 2011).
It’s also really good since we are in compliance with each and every single one of our remote teams’ place of residence. We’re delighted to express our satisfaction regarding our collaboration with RemotePass. Their cutting-edge cloud-based platform has revolutionized our workforce and hiring procedures, enabling us to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in managing everything. It serves as a comprehensive solution that has greatly simplified our operations, making remote work effortless. This guide explains the different types of org charts, explore their specific benefits for remote teams, and show you how RemotePass can automate their creation. When employees experience burnout, they may begin to look for other opportunities or leave the organization altogether.
By addressing labor fatigue proactively, businesses not only enhance employee well-being but also position themselves to thrive in an ever-evolving work landscape, turning challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation. This shows that longer working hours can cause further problems regarding work-life balance, increased stress levels, fatigue, and ultimately burnout for remote workers. Research shows that, on average, remote workers tend to work 3 hours more (i.e., about 11 hours per day) than regular office workers. It seems like the main reason for this lies in the remote employees’ inability to disconnect from work, the interconnectedness of work and personal spaces, and the challenge of working with colleagues from different time zones.
Adopting such practices can become a game-changer, transforming potential challenges of remote work into opportunities for growth and fulfillment. However, no style of work is the ultimate solution, and with the onset of remote work, the boundaries between one’s professional and personal life are blurred. As a result, 69% of remote workers are experiencing burnout symptoms due to being overworked, having no sense of work life balance, and feeling unsupported.
The COVID-19 pandemic in particular warrants fresh, holistic perspectives and more nuanced terminology and understandings to address the various types of technostress caused by work- and personal technology-related platforms. We argue that technostress, as discussed in the IS literature (Tarafdar et al., 2007, Tarafdar et al., 2010, Tarafdar et al., 2015), can be separated from the types of technostress individuals experience due to excessive use of and exposure to social media-based platforms. We refer to technostress induced by work-related technologies as work technology platform stress (WTPS), and technostress induced by personal technologies as personal technology platform stress (PTPS). This study thus endeavours to clarify this issue by distinguishing between these two settings. The nature and impact of remote work conducted outside of more conventional organisational settings varies considerably (Mulki et al., 2009). Remote work is a particular type of flexible work pattern that denotes working without a fixed spatial or time boundaries (Soga et al., 2022).
