Remote Work Challenges: 5 Best Strategies for Well-being

Introduction

Working from home has presented some challenges for everyone. There have been changes in the workspace model: hybrid workspace mode, on-work-site, and complete work from home. Employees have adapted to the new workspace model, and some even find it hard to return to the on-site working model (Delbosc & Kent, 2023). However, just like the advantages, there are certain challenges to be met in the remote work environment.

Remote Work Challenges

1. Trouble managing time:  Many employees who work from home have many distractions in their environment, and it’s easier to get distracted by time and time again. With their work being done online, their basic home chores intertwine with their ethical work regime, especially with remote work. Some corporations ask their employees to work and log on after working hours or work for more than regular working hours.
2. Team Communication: Due to remote work, employees sometimes feel detached. They don’t feel like they are being completely included in the project or given a full-size picture of things, and they feel left out. The wait for a response for someone who’s working remotely is increased by hours to get a response via mail. 
3. Unreliable Internet: A properly working machine and the Internet are the core of remote work, and any issues with it can cause your whole work setup to come to a halt.
4. Your Presence is unseen: Working remotely has its fair share of advantages and disadvantages, and one of them is that within an office space, someone who is working remotely is not noticed as much as others who are coming daily to the office. 
5. Accusation of not working: Usually, we find others calling remote workers someone who isn’t working, and it becomes a challenge as well as a chore to justify and prove their productivity.

Effects of Remote Work Challenges

• Resilience: Challenges are a part of everyone’s life, and learning to overcome them makes us resilient. 
• Overwork and Burnout: Individuals with remote work usually work longer hours than their counterparts in the office, to the extent that their work life starts melding into their personal life and having an adverse effect on their overall well-being, causing burnout in many individuals. 
• Social isolation: Work intensification or prolonged working hours can also have an effect on your social well-being, causing isolation, which can also contribute to burnout. According to the researchers, “this syndrome has reached epidemic proportions around the world”  (Valsania, Laguía, & Moriano, 2022)
• Work Pressure Affects Productivity: These are some of the few challenges that have adverse physiological and psychological effects on your health as an employee. These challenges cause high levels of stress, which sequentially affects your productivity, and when your productivity goes down, your superiors will scold you for the work not done. 
• Impulsivity: During this, you would be feeling a range of negative emotions, from worthlessness to anger. Sometimes, while going through a surge of these emotions, we tend to get impulsive and choose to quit our current workplace. 
• Hasty Decision: Looking for a better opportunity for self-growth is not an issue, but acting impulsively without a proper plan and schedule can make things even more problematic.

Remote Work Challenges and Quitting Job

• Stress: High levels of stress sequentially affect your productivity. When your productivity goes down, your superiors question you for the delay, after which you might feel a range of negative emotions, from worthlessness to anger and overwhelming sadness.
• Comparison: Remote workers usually get compared with employees who come to work physically and are given more importance and projects due to how they are easily available physically. Comparison on the basis of physical availability can cause undesired thoughts and emotions to occur, making you feel cheated out of an opportunity or supervisors being biased towards others than you.
• Financial Situation: Remote work has advantages and disadvantages. In some places, financial promotions are given more openly and prioritized than remote workers due to their physical availability and the social aspects they have with people at the workplace.

 5 Tips To Deal with Remote Work Challenges

1. Take Breaks: Learn to earn your breaks rather than overworking yourself task after task. Make a schedule for the day before you begin working, and follow it while keeping a break for yourself where you can clear your head and relax for a while before going back to it. Be clear about your log-off time with your team once you finish your work, and make boundaries between your workplace and your personal life. These would reduce the chances of burnout.
2. Appreciate your Achievements: Pat yourself on the back after every successful task. Remote workers don’t have a constant manager overlooking their progress and managing their time for them, so they have a lot of room to get distracted and procrastinate. But even then, if you are doing your work on time, give yourself a reward to keep yourself motivated.
3. Environmental Distraction: Working at home comes with its own set of problems, from relatives visiting your house to children making sounds. You must designate a room for working and make sure that you have notified your family; with children, you can always teach them when or when not to come to your workspace. This space would help you to be more consistent in your working hours, and you would tend to cover more work than usual.
4. Social Aspect: Social interactions sometimes hit rock bottom when it comes to remote working; try to talk to your friends on call when you are on your breaks, and make sure you are going out at least once to relieve yourself of all the stress you have accumulated throughout the week and in doing so meet with other people or join online communities.
5. Connectivity Issues: The Internet is the soul of someone who is remotely working. If the Internet goes out, you should always have a backup plan prepared beforehand so that rather than panicking at that exact moment, you can work on the solution. Connect with your mobile hotspot or connect with a neighbor’s Wi-Fi.

Conclusion

Remote work may come with its share of challenges, but other modes of work have their own set of challenges as well. The right mindset is to look at these challenges with the vision of overcoming them. Focus on yourself as much as you focus on your work to take care of your overall well-being. When in doubt, always look back at your previous accomplishments as proof of your strength.

References

Delbosc, A., & Kent, J. (2023). Employee intentions and employer expectations: a mixed-methods systematic review of “post-COVID” intentions to work from home.

Valsania, S. E., Laguía, A., & Moriano, J. A. (2022). Burnout: A Review of Theory and Measurement. Int J Environ Res Public Health.

1. Mahesh (2024) Remote Work: Challenges and Strategies for Effective Management

Amin Al-Habaibeh, Mathew Watkins, Kafael Waried & Maryam Bathaei Javareshk (2021). Challenges and opportunities of remotely working from home during Covid-19 pandemic