How to reduce burnout with remote employees

Helping remote employees overcome burnout and loneliness

According to Owl Labs, “52% of employees around the world work from home at least once per week.” Remote work is becoming more common, and it poses challenges for some employees. Remote work is a fantastic opportunity for many employees who love working at home, but it’s not all sunshine. Remote workers deal with a lot of issues like burnout and loneliness. Today, let’s shed some light on burnout and how to help your remote employees deal with it.

Remote employees can feel burnout too

While remote work provides increased flexibility, your remote workers are dealing with burnout too. Often, remote employees can feel more burnout because they feel like they have something to prove. Your employees want to show you that they can be trusted, so they may feel the need to work harder, which creates more stress and fatigue.

Be cognizant of how you frame remote work

Are you setting your employees up to feel like they owe the company more due to their remote work status? Remote work isn’t a perk. It’s a way that your employees work. You have to be mindful of how you frame remote work, so you don’t cause our employees to feel like they owe you something.

Spot the signs of burnout

The only way to stop or reduce burnout is by knowing the signs of burnout. Here are some signs of burnout you may want to be on the lookout for:

• Inability to concentrate
• Recurring sickness
• Hopelessness
• Lack of motivation
• Cynicism towards their job

Think about your employees and how they usually behave. Are they taking a sharp turn towards a lack of motivation and negative behaviors at work? There are a variety of issues that may be causing this drastic turn, but you might want to look into burnout as a cause of these negative behaviors first.

Five things you can do for remote workers suffering burnout

Now, let’s talk about a few things you can do for your remote workers who may be suffering from burnout.

1. Let them know that you acknowledge their hard work

Your remote workers are doing a lot. As we discussed earlier, they may feel the need to go above and beyond because of their remote status. While hard work is appreciated, it can easily slip into negative territory. Hard work shouldn’t be sustained forever. There should be ebbs and flow in work. Otherwise, you’ll be on a sure path to burnout. Take your time to acknowledge remote employees who work hard for your company and boost employee morale.

2. Improve work/life balance

When you work from home, work/life balance can be challenging to achieve. Here are some simple ways to improve work/life balance for your remote workers:

• Create a strict no emails/Slack chats/text message after hours rule. If all your employees are in the same location, this is a great way to reduce after-hours interruptions. If you have international employees, you may want to consider another way to
• Have a work phone/computer. Being able to shut off your phone after hours or turn off your work computer is satisfying and can give your employees the separation they need to have balance in their lives.
• Pay for a coworking or office space. Another way to add some balance is separating home and office. Coworking spaces and offices outside the home aren’t as expensive as you might think. Depending on where your employee lives, these might be considerably cheaper than what you pay for office space as a company.

3. Focus on the results, not hours spent working

Another way to reduce burnout for remote employees is to put more focus on the results–not the hours worked. Hours spent sitting in a chair isn’t an excellent method of understanding office productivity. Instead, you want to focus on the output. Some of your employees might able to get more done in an hour than some people can get done all day. You shouldn’t force your employees to spend eight hours at the computer if they can get the work done well in four hours. Consider how your employees will feel now that they can focus on getting great results, no matter how long it takes them to do so.

4. Offer work perks like gym memberships, meditation apps, and therapy sessions

If you want to reduce stress and burnout, give your employees work perks that focus on their mental and physical health. For example, you can reimburse your employees for gym memberships, let them use meditation apps, or give them access to therapy. These simple work perks will help your employees feel more at ease and help them cope with their feelings of burnout healthily.

5. Help your employees create a routine

Last but not least, if you want to stop your remote employees from experiencing burnout, help your remote workers create a routine. Establishing and maintaining a routine is often cited as one of the best things for remote workers. Remote work is new for everyone. Remote employees often enjoy the benefits of being able to work from home, but they still need to learn how to juggle this newfound freedom. Help your employees establish a routine that sets them up for success. How will they start the day? When will they sit down to work each day? Help them figure out the practices that help them with productivity and burnout reduction.

Communicate With Your Remote Employees Often

Above all else, you need to communicate with your remote employees often. You cannot assume you know what they are going through. You need to ask them. Some people are better at hiding their burnout than others. If you communicate with your team, you’ll always know how they feel about the work they do. Make communication a priority, so your team feels comfortable talking to you about issues that are affecting them at and outside of work.

Conclusion

Burnout can cause significant issues at work if it goes unchecked. As an employer, you can help your team deal with issues related to burnout at work. While remote workers aren’t as easy to connect with, you need to communicate with your remote team more so you can stop burnout in its tracks.