Remote work burnout, professional job stress, and employee emotional exhaustion during the COVID-19 pandemic

Moreover, this issue of labor fatigue is not merely an isolated concern, but one steeped in significant financial implications. According to a report by Gallup, organizations with high employee engagement can see up to 21% greater profitability, whereas disengaged employees cost businesses an estimated $450 to $550 billion annually in lost productivity. The narrative unfolds with companies like Microsoft investing heavily in mental health initiatives, recognizing that a fatigued workforce can lead to attrition rates soaring as high as 50% in certain sectors.

It also gives people the freedom to engage in other fulfilling activities outside of work. For example, if a staff member is a part of a local choir or sports team, they can craft their schedules to allow time for those activities. Outside of that block of time, employees have the freedom to work when they choose, as long as they manage their time effectively.

3. Subjective wellbeing and exhaustion

1. This initiative not only promotes personal well-being but also fosters a healthy work culture.
2. The extant literature on remote working has viewed prior remote working experience as a resource that facilitates individuals to adjust in the new environment and get the most benefit out of flexible working environments (Raghuram et al., 2001, Gajendran and Harrison, 2007).
3. Remote working includes consecutive experience with relevant technology that can facilitate a successful transition (Anderson and Kelliher, 2020, Wang et al., 2021).
4. The idea is relatively simple – to do work in 25-minute chunks, and to punctuate those chunks with five-minute breaks.
5. Even during an “ordinary” year, millions of workers struggle with mental health issues, so if you don’t already have these resources in place, think of them as a long-term investment in the health and well-being of your workforce.
6. But stepping away from your computer screen to grab a cup of coffee is not a real break.

Here are some ways you can set yourself up for a more relaxing, manageable, and productive work and home life. A collection of resources, all around a certain remote work topic, sent every other week. To learn more about optimizing remote work strategies, explore the other articles on NoHQ. While you physically distance yourself from others, remember to connect in other ways. Set up a Zoom game night to catch up with friends, send a care package to loved ones, or drop off a home-cooked dinner for an elderly neighbor. While vaccine rollouts from both Pfizer and Moderna are underway, we are still months from returning safely to pre-COVID socializing.

Take time off to disconnect

We categorise strain as the psychological state caused by stressors, where techno-exhaustion is considered as strain. We suggest that technostress emanating from WTPS and PTPS would have an additive effect on technology-related exhaustion in an enforced work-from-home context, such as the COVID-19 period. The stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) model (Ragu-Nathan et al., 2008) is used as the theoretical framework of this study.

As such, the study empirically tests and explains the extent to which work-related technostress leads to a decrease in subjective wellbeing, an approach that advances the study of technostress. To further explain the interactive experience of work and personal technology stress, we test the impact of remote working experience as a job resource. Results show that individuals who had a low percentage of remote work during COVID 19 experience high WPTS due to an increased use of work platforms. During COVID-19, however, people may have had to continuously oscillate between the office-based and remote work setups.

Breaking Through Task Paralysis: Creative Strategies for the Neurodiverse

1. Thought to be coined by Stanford University professor Jeremy Bailenson, the term refers to a level of exhaustion that comes with interacting with others on camera all throughout the day.
2. As the weeks turned into months, reports emerged illustrating a significant increase in feelings of loneliness, with over 40% of workers expressing that isolation was negatively impacting their mental health.
3. In remote-working scenarios, people need to manage various digital platforms and applications while simultaneously balancing their work, familial, and social commitments.
4. This not only enhances your work environment but also positively impacts your mental well-being.
5. How stress is caused by remote work situations (Perry et al., 2018) and the ways work technology often pervades our daily lives have also been examined (Anderson and Kelliher, 2020, Walters et al., 2022).

Office Whisperer” and “Hybrid Expert” by The New York Times, I help leaders use hybrid work to improve retention and productivity while cutting costs. I serve as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. I wrote the first book on returning to the office and leading hybrid teams after the pandemic, my best-seller Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams, as well as seven other books. My remote work fatigue cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 650 articles in prominent venues such as Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and Forbes.

For individuals navigating similar challenges, establishing a structured schedule and setting boundaries around work hours can significantly enhance both well-being and productivity in a remote work environment. Physical and emotional load, psychological fatigue, emotional pressures, and excessive workloads brought about increased professional burnout. Demands and resources had to be balanced across organizations to diminish emotional exhaustion, professional discomfort, and job burnout while optimizing motivational processes, work performance, and psychological wellbeing.

A recent study by Gallup revealed that 76% of remote workers report feelings of burnout, often stemming from blurred lines between personal and professional life. Imagine Jane, a dedicated project manager who has been clocking in long hours at her kitchen table, slowly feeling the weight of her screen time, which averages a staggering 10 hours daily. 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. That is, those who face enforced technology-enabled work from home may have to simultaneously deal with extensive technology for personal use. During COVID-19, technology tools have emerged not only as a mode of work but also in many instances, as the only way to be entertained and connected to family, friends, and the outside world (Dey et al., 2020). Have you ever found yourself staring at your computer screen for hours, feeling as if the walls are closing in?

Signs It’s Time to Leave Your Job (And What to Do Next)

The model enables us to identify the causes (stressors or environmental stimulus), nature (strain), and outcomes (techno-invasion, overload, insecurity, complexity, and uncertainty) of technostress. While video calls can be convenient, Elliott warned that staring at a computer or phone screen for extended periods of time can result in negative mental health consequences. Choose a quiet area with minimal distractions and ensure your workspace is comfortable and well-organised.

Work stressors in terms of high workload and job insecurity amplified work–life conflict, intensifying psychological strain and decreasing perceptions of social support. Technostress can lead to psychological as well as physiological reactions such as techno-exhaustion (Cao and Sun, 2018, Maier et al., 2019) and reduced wellbeing (Islam et al., 2020, Ioannou et al., 2022). The existing literature, however, has not clearly explained the impact of technostress on psychological outcomes in particular, when stress is exacerbated by an enforced or sudden shift to home-based remote work, and when social relations necessarily shift from in-person to online.

Some thought the pandemic would be short-lived and everyone would soon return to the office, but nine months have already passed. “Tiger King” and murder hornets kept us distracted briefly during the pandemic, while the Pentagon announced the possibility of UFOs. You need to implement a wholesale strategic shift to reframe your company culture and policies from the “emergency mode” of working from home to remote work being the new normal. Further, the number of respondents who feel more productive working at home instead of their company’s office is dropping. Only 37% of respondents say they feel more productive at home than in the office, which is down from 48% in an April 2020 survey, JLL finds. Of course, this depends on the size of your house, your furniture, and your general living arrangements.

Many companies are seeing a huge hit to their bottom line due to not properly addressing burnout and other health-related problems their employees are experiencing. While it is true that remote work offers more flexibility when it comes to work schedules, that in itself is not always a good thing. Some remote workers may lack the self-discipline and self-motivation skills to create a work structure and a set routine. Loneliness can cause stress, and prolonged feelings of stress are considered one of the main causes of burnout.