As we already mentioned in the article… working from home for such an extended period of time constitutes a novelty for the vast majority of the Italian workforce. One of the main challenges that often arise in this situation is the ability to draw clear boundaries between the professional and personal life.
Working from home has certainly its advantages, but it also comes with challenges that we need to address correctly. In the morning, we can spare ourselves the hassle to dress-up for work and the traffic of rush hour, instead we slip into a comfortable pair of track-suit bottoms and wake-up just 30 minutes before work. At the same time, our home and the spaces that were once dedicated to our personal life, have now become our new office and have been allocated to our professional life. This overlap often leads us to unhealthy behaviours, such as working 24/7.
The transformation of our homes from private to work spaces came with unrealistic and unsustainable productivity standards: being always reachable to address work matters is just one example. But it is not just the employers who cannot respect boundaries but also clients and colleagues who, by no longer having office hours to refer to, feel entitle to contact us well after 6pm.
In our opinion, working remotely is the will increasingly become an option for many employees even once the lockdown will be over. Therefore, we would like to give you few pieces of advice that we have taken from Harvard Business Review. We are confident that you will find them refreshingly useful.
- Define clear but flexible working-hours
We believ that flexibility is important and prefers quality over quantity. We are well aware that the 9am – 5pm schedule may not work for everyone, at least not all the time. Especially for those in that during this time of lockdown live with children and the elderly this working schedule may prove diffuclt to stick to. So how can we meet work and family-related expectations? The secret is to coordinate our own time with that of others and to communicate our availability with co-workers, clients and family.
Feeling guilty for asking more flexibility is pointless. What matters is that work meets quality standards and deadlines. The “how” and “when” are seconday.
- Focus on the priorities.
Many employees that work remotely feel the constant to need to prove their productivity to others. This may lead to the prioritization of less important but more immediate task to showcase their productivity output in the short term. However, thinking, exchanging opinions, planning and designing roadmaps to achieve specific business objectives is crucial. This the added value we have as human compared to machines. Let’s please not forget this.
- Try to maintain the work-home transition activities in your routine
Let’s try to maintain all those activities that represent the transition from our home to your work reality: get dressed in proper clothing, shaving, putting make up on, commute. Why? Because it gives us structure which gives us order, clarity, confidence and motivation. Therefore, in order to stay motivated while working from home it is important to have a routine and to keep the so-called “transition activities in our daily lives”. We suggest to substitute the commute time with some indoor physical exercise.
Perhaps working remotely will teach us to work strategically and prioritize quality over quantity.
Finally the wish of the Agency Perdonà stays the same: may these challenging times be the opportunity for our regeneration.
