Is Remote Work as Glamorous as it Sounds?

Having been a remote worker for nearly half of my career, I actually prefer it over going into the office regularly despite the dreary scientific news.

According to a recent NPR article, they cite a Science research article, that working from home isn’t great for mental health outcomes. In fact, it made workers more socially isolated when compared to people working in office settings.

What happened is that people in remote jobs “spent approximately one additional hour alone per workday after the pandemic” and an increase in “days spent entirely alone and decreased after-work socializing.” In addition, the research results showed remote workers mental distress increased twice as much for people living alone versus living with family.

...mental distress increased twice as much for people living alone...

As someone who lives alone, is an introverted extrovert, this study speaks to me personally.

It makes you think that executives want more RTO (hint: they do [p. 8]), but I push back on that knee-jerk reaction. It’s your organizational culture that needs some shifting to keep employees mentally happy and bring inclusiveness into the digital work environment.

Change can also come from you!

I think there are ways that anyone can reduce the loneliness, isolation, and disconnection from working from home. That also can include reducing the mental distress that comes from not visiting an office. But I want flexibility to perform my tasks in a comfortable environment. In exchange, the company gets availability flexibility. Happy employee, happy manager, happy culture. More productive?

Here’s my top six suggestions that you can take to build a better remote work experience for people who live alone.

• Build and maintain healthy connections at work

• Co-work with fellow remote employees

• Build your social life outside of work

• Instead of a lunch break, how about a gym break?

• Set reasonable boundaries and time commitments

• Offer a longer work availability window

I dive into each of these in detail below, because you deserve ideas to take home, literally.

Something about working all day from home is nice, you can concentrate on getting your tasks done and perform at a high capacity. At my previous company I made it an effort to get to know as many people as possible, learn more about their hobbies, families, and projects. It was helpful for me to stay connected either by forming or joining employee resource groups that meet once or twice a month for a virtual chat. When we had major team group gatherings at headquarters, I would plan to meet with everyone and spend as much time with everyone as possible before flying home. That even meant commuting with them back to the airport.

Depending on your work policies (such as sensitive material/content handling, work locations, etc.) consider finding a group of remote workers like yourself who may need an afternoon to get work done. Having that fellow colleague around can help make you feel socially connected. At the very best, you maintain a routine. I would do this with friends who are still in college or studying for medical boards.

One of the benefits of working from home is that after work was done, I could leave home and grow my personal social groups. For me, that was social dancing. Instead of dreading a commute home, I can plan and prepare for the rest of the evening instead of staying at home. While my social life is mainly involved with dance scenes, I also added more aspects such as maintaining my friend groups and planning for after-work events.

Lunch is great, but what about a workout? What I would do is adjust my lunch time to workout at the gym. It helped me stay fit and balance my day by going out. This would especially be helpful for those days when the weather made it difficult to do anything after work and I also could build out my social network by consistently showing up when other gym-goers did the same.

One of the things I feel gets really weird is around work surveillance and whether work gets done. As long as productivity is as expected, projects are delivered, everyone is happy, what does it matter? I know that when I used to work at another organization that was fully in-office, there were moments during the day where it was appropriate to socialize with fellow co-workers, like 10-15% of your work week was used up by social activities at work (which is like 4-6 hours). Even the boss would tell you to take off early to beat rush-hour. That is built-in employee trust. In addition, there are times where you need to stop and that is reasonable. You aren’t a robot just because you’re remote.

While some of these activities like co-working, gym break, and errands likely eat into a work day, I self-accounted by adding more work availability during the day. That meant that I’d get up earlier to get work done, check emails after work, and appropriately respond where needed.

What you get with a remote employee is a dedicated individual who is willing to trade off their commute for a more flexible schedule, offer a greater work availability window, and be extremely committed to their role. While it’s unfortunate that there are mental stressors for living alone, I think that working remotely has far greater benefits and should never be dismissed by prospective employers seeking top-notch talent.

If you are a remote worker who lives alone like myself (as of this posting), I hope that you take these suggestions and create your own balanced lifestyle that makes you feel connected, happy, and purposeful day after day. And take breaks to bring you peace and energy with whatever stresses you out.

However, I am unwilling to allow my salary to be reduced by 4 to 10% just to work 100% from home.