Five Strategies For Combating Fatigue Among Remote Employees

As seen from this brief literature review, there is a dearth of studies on technostress in enforced work contexts. One of the biggest challenges of remote work is the blurring of lines between professional and personal life. Without clear boundaries, it’s easy to find yourself working longer hours and losing track of personal time.

Some studies suggest you should take five-minute screen breaks every hour so try to get up from your screen and stretch every hour. It is important for your eyes, posture, and overall well-being to stop staring at your screen. Think of that time away from your screen as a small mental health maintenance exercise.

To achieve these research objectives, we draw upon the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) model (Ragu-Nathan et al., 2008) to assess the impact of work-platform technostress and personal-platform stress on techno-exhaustion and subjective wellbeing. Our findings suggest that in an enforced remote work (e.g., work-from-home) scenario, an increased use of both forms of technology platforms (work and personal use) lead to technostress, which causes techno-exhaustion and reduces subjective wellbeing. In examining these relationships, the study also contributes by identifying and analysing the moderating role of resilience and remote-work intensity (i.e., experience) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Whenever you’re able, suggest audio-only meetings that don’t require screens so people can do things they would naturally do in an in-person setting, like move around or look out a window,” she advised. Just because a meeting is scheduled on Zoom or a similar video conferencing platform doesn’t mean you need to be on video for the call, Elliott pointed out. “Because video platforms artificially limit our perspective, we miss the cues we’re used to from live, in-person interactions.” “Because video platforms artificially limit our perspective, we miss the cues we’re used to from live, in-person interactions,” she told Fox News Digital. The challenge isn’t exclusive to Zoom; other videoconferencing platforms can have the same effect. Some of the causes of WFH burnout are related to new worries, unfamiliar responsibilities, and a completely different environment.

Key Challenges Faced by Remote Workers

In the current environment especially, when seeing friends and colleagues face to face is rare or heavily controlled, actually having a little bit of breaktime with co-workers is really valuable. Consider whether all the people you’ve invited to a meeting really need to be there. Consider instead whether you can send that information out by e-mail or any other kind of management software. This makes life easier for you, as the person scheduling meetings, and for all the participants.

The Impact of Remote Work on Labor Fatigue: Challenges and Solutions

Perhaps you can encourage employees to ensure they schedule time in between Zoom meetings to get work down or decompress. Many companies have brought on a therapist or ministry team to give team members someone to talk to that can provide them best practices on managing stress and implementing practices that keep them mentally crisp and healthy. One compelling example of effective remote management is illustrated by a tech giant that experienced a 40% boost in productivity after emphasizing regular check-ins and transparent communication. Additionally, research from the Harvard Business Review shows that 76% of remote employees feel more isolated than their in-office counterparts. To counteract this, successful managers are turning to initiatives like virtual team-building activities and collaborative tools to strengthen team cohesion. By sharing success stories and employing these best practices, managers can create a sense of belonging and purpose—resulting in higher retention rates and a committed workforce ready to embrace the challenges of the virtual workspace.

Negative attitudes and behaviors and low professional motivation and engagement influenced remote workplace practices in terms of diminished productivity. Flexible jobs, time management, and emotional team support can improve employee health, productivity, performance, and creativity, reducing workplace stress, anxiety, burnout, and isolation. Organizational support decreased workplace stress, which brought about feelings of hopelessness.

Implementing Flexible Scheduling to Reduce Stress

While employers can’t neutralize every negative aspect of working from home, there are things that both employer and employee can do to alleviate or reduce the strain of remote working. Any advice on how to get out of this funk and create a daily routine to help me feel mentally better/ less tired? But stepping away from your computer screen to grab a cup of coffee is not a real break. Encourage your remote workers to take real breaks, shutting down their devices and intentionally shifting their attention to something other than work. Break reduction could be because people are in their personal spaces, stuck in the middle ground between working and relaxing. They may be wearing comfy clothing instead of their typical professional attire and have easy access to their kitchen for snacks throughout the day.

1. It allows attendees to prepare specific questions, presentations, and thoughts beforehand and maximize the time that you have together on a video call.
2. To achieve these research objectives, we draw upon the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) model (Ragu-Nathan et al., 2008) to assess the impact of work-platform technostress and personal-platform stress on techno-exhaustion and subjective wellbeing.
3. While remote work gives staff time back in their personal lives by cutting commute time and increasing workday flexibility, it can also increase fatigue.
4. This helps clear up any issues that employees might be experiencing, as well as resolve any feelings of uncertainty that they have about their work.
5. In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, IBM faced a unique challenge as it transitioned to a remote work model for thousands of employees.
6. These newest entrants to the workforce have higher-than-average fears of unemployment and worry their lack of face time with leaders is slowing their career progression.
7. PLS-SEM is also considered relevant and appropriate in similar studies such as Maier et al. (2019).

Working Longer Hours

1. Only articles that reached the “high quality (++)” and“acceptable (+)” categories were included.
2. While vaccine rollouts from both Pfizer and Moderna are underway, we are still months from returning safely to pre-COVID socializing.
3. It’s easy to lose yourself in your work, especially in a remote work environment with no colleagues to remind you it’s break time.
4. In conclusion, the shift to remote work has significantly reshaped the landscape of labor fatigue, presenting both challenges and potential solutions.

This phenomenon makes it clear that integrating strategies like mindfulness and regular breaks is essential for recharging. Just stepping away for a few minutes to stretch or take a deep breath can help reset your brain, boost your creativity, and improve overall productivity. Remote work burnout is when employees fall into a state of emotional or mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stressful professional experiences, and is signaled by feeling emotionally drained and not being able to meet the demands of your workplace. Organisations ought to take extra measures to mitigate the impact of technostress during possible lockdown and other restrictive measures (e.g. work from home) now and in the future. Zoom and Microsoft Teams have necessarily become popular since the advent of COVID-19. These tools allow people to join according to their own convenience, where they remote work fatigue do not have to receive a call while doing something else.

Furthermore, there has been little empirical research on the joint impact of both work and personal platforms on stress and its resulting effects on exhaustion and wellbeing. In this paper, we aim to address this gap in the literature by analysing the joint impact of work and personal platform-induced technostress on individuals’ psychological outcomes (e.g., techno-exhaustion and subjective wellbeing) in an enforced remote work situation. Considering the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is an appropriate context for assessing and analysing the joint impact of work and personal technology platform use on individuals’ stress and wellbeing (Azer et al., 2021, Verma and Gustafsson, 2020).