How to Prevent Employee Burnout While Working From Home

Having your team work from home can provide a lot of benefits. The elimination of in-office distractions plus the ability to structure their own time can make employees more productive.

However, there are various aspects to working at home that can cause employees to become stressed, anxious, and unmotivated. If these feelings continue, employees can eventually burnout. This will result in issues such as decreases in productivity and creativeness, more sick days, and high employee turnover.

Preventing employee burnout doesn’t have to be difficult. As with keeping employees happy and motivated in-office, there are management tactics you can use to keep your remote team motivated and feeling positive in their role.

Even if you aren’t in a management position, there are still things you can do to make your working from home situation successful to help avoid burning out.

Try the following tactics, for employers and employees, to prevent employee burnout while working from home.

Tips For Employers

If you’re used to managing an in-office team, switching to a remote set-up can be daunting. However, there’s a good chance that your team will be more productive and efficient when working from home.

Despite this, you’ll need to make adjustments and set rules to ensure your employees stay motivated and efficient and don’t burnout.

Implement the following tactics to help prevent employee burnout while working from home.

Set Work Hours

Make sure employees know the hours they are to work. For many, that will be sticking to working the same hours they did in the office. If that’s the case for your company, start the day with a quick video conference to go over everyone’s tasks for the day. If this isn’t possible, get each employee to send a list via email at the start of the day.

Having a set meeting at the start of the day will help get employees into a routine. Additionally, make sure they’re ending work at the normal time. At home, employees may be more inclined to work later. Or they may take more breaks during the day and make up for that time by working later. However, cutting into more personal time than usual is likely to cause burnout.

Again, you could end the day with a set activity. For example, have a quick call where everyone says what they accomplished during the day and any problems that arose. Don’t approve overtime requests unless absolutely necessary.

Adjusting Work Schedules

While average 9-5 work hours is what most companies will start out with when working remotely, consider allowing employees to adjust their schedules.

Working from home is a great time to increase everyone’s productivity by giving them a schedule that reflects their most productive and creative hours. Some workers will naturally be more motivated to work in the evening. Others may like to start earlier than might be possible when working in an office.

Remote employees will appreciate the freedom to keep a schedule that reflects their most productive and creative hours.

As long as everyone can work together on different schedules and employees don’t need to be active during set times, let employees choose to work at their most productive times. Still ensure that each employee has a set number of hours to work each day and this is stuck to.

If your team is working on different schedules, make sure everyone on the team knows each employee’s working hours. Encourage employees to put an out of office message for the hours they don’t work.

Limit Contact Outside Of Work Hours

Additionally, try to limit contact with employees during their off time. As mentioned, completing work tasks in personal time can contribute significantly to burnout. However, many employees feel compelled to reply to work emails, especially from higher-ups, as soon as they see them even if it’s not during their working time.

Make What Needs To Be Done Clear

Not knowing expectations and what exactly needs to be done and by when is a major source of stress for employees. Spending time trying to figure out what needs to be done and not being sure their work is up to scratch can be demotivating to employees and cause them to burn out as a result.

Working from home makes it more likely that expectations aren’t necessarily clear. In the office, employees can quickly and easily ask questions. However, they may feel like they cannot ask lots of smaller questions via email. Or, if you have a lot of emails and do not see their questions until later, they may be left confused about tasks for hours at a time.

Make it clear that your employees can ask management and other employees any questions they feel necessary. Also, ask that employees being asked questions try to respond as soon as possible.

You can also ease this issue by setting deadlines for work. Also, provide clear guidelines on how to complete the tasks set and provide quick feedback when tasks are completed.

Try A Work Messaging Platform

Instead of email or call, set up a messaging platform that everyone is comfortable with. You can set up most platforms on your desktop or phone. You will get on-screen notifications so you can reply straight away. Unlike email, it will only be your employees using this platform so messages won’t get lost amongst client correspondence.

Connect With Your Employees As A Team

It can be more difficult to work as a team when employees are remote. This can lead to more than one employee working on one project or working at odds with each other. This can be frustrating to employees if they see another employee working on a task they thought was theirs to complete. Feeling like their work was a waste of time or isn’t appreciated will lead to burnout.

Daily task meetings can help avoid confusion and frustration by making it clear what needs to be done and who is responsible for the work.

Have a team meeting at agreed times (each day, once a week, etc.) to discuss what needs to be done and who is working on what. Try not to mix up tasks and make it clear who is responsible for what.

Use Task Management Systems

Using task management systems like Asana helps a lot with helping everyone know who is responsible for what. They also put a checking process in place. You can check work quality and that it has been completed. You can also use these platforms to provide deadlines and message employees.

When working remotely, stress can occur due to employees being worried that they aren’t doing enough or that it isn’t clear that they are working. Task management systems can help with this too. Along with being able to put larger tasks and projects in, you can set up subtasks (or the employee doing the work can add subtasks.) These can then be marked off more frequently, making it clear that they are working on the assigned project.

Don’t Micro-Manage

You may feel the need to check in on what your employees are doing more often when they aren’t in the office. However, this can be demeaning, especially to more experienced employees, and can actually be counterproductive.

Make sure you know what employees are doing each day or week and then let them get to it. Make it clear that as long as they are doing what needs to be done, you trust them and that they are working their hardest. Also, let employees know that they can get in touch to ask questions but otherwise don’t interfere.

You could still check how things are going at longer intervals. For example, have employees let you know their tasks for the week on Monday. Then check in mid-week to see how they are doing, if they need anything, and what other tasks have come up. You can then have a meeting on Friday to go over the week’s work and provide feedback.

If a meeting at the start of each day, as suggested earlier, works for your team, that’s fine too. But don’t spend the day checking in with employees. Let them tell you what they’re doing at the start of the day, and again, leave them to it.

Discuss Employee Concerns and Stressors

Along with checking on work tasks, check on how employees are doing working at home in general. For example, an employee may feel stressed as the working hours you set coincide with when their kids are at home. It could help this employee's productivity and decrease the chance of burnout to adjust their working hours.

Some workers may also appreciate more meetings and check-ins while others may need less of these to increase productivity. By discussing an ideal working at home environment, your employees will be less stressed and less at risk of burnout.

Let it be known that constructive comments on working at home schedules are allowed. Allow employees to be clear about anything that may be affecting their productivity.

For example, multiple video conferences each day may be seen as not useful by some and affect productivity. In-office meetings may decrease motivation for some too, but it’s a lot easier to get back to tasks when everything is happening in the office. Listen to these comments and adjust your management tactics where possible.

Encourage Employees To Take Time For Themselves

Having breaks and personal time helps decrease the stress and anxiety that could lead to burnout.

Encourage workers to take the same breaks they would at work. This could be a 15-minute morning break, 15-minute afternoon break, and 30-minutes for lunch. As mentioned, also ensure they are ending their workday when they should and try to limit approving overtime requests.

Additionally, encourage your employees to do something relaxing and enjoyable at the end of the workday. You could even provide employees with a subscription to a health and wellness or workout app or a skill learning program to incentivize them to do so.

Tips For Employees

If you’re working remotely for your employer and have little say over management, there are still things you can do to optimize your working at home situation and decrease the chance of burnout.

Follow A Routine

Just because you’re working at home doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow a work routine. Wake up with time to get yourself prepared to begin your workday on time. Most companies will give you set work times, but if your employer doesn’t, set your own schedule and make sure you follow it. Remember to take breaks throughout the day. Also, end your day on time and make sure to take time to relax and de-stress.

Ask For Help

When working in the office, it’s easy to go and ask coworkers for help or to confirm details about a task. This can be more difficult when working remotely. Even having a simple question that you cannot get answered can highly affect your ability to complete a task leading to frustration.

Don’t be afraid to email or call your coworkers (as long as you are abiding by any set rules) and follow-up to emails you send. If you don’t use a messaging system, suggest this to your managers and explain the benefits.

Don’t be afraid to discuss any potential issue you are facing with coworkers or managers.

Discuss Problems You Encounter

It can always be difficult to discuss problems you’re facing with your manager. But it’s important that you do and it’s even more important when working remotely.

If you have issues with your remote working situation and find certain things are leading to increased stress and decreased productivity, make a list and schedule a meeting to discuss these with your manager.

Phrase your concerns in a positive and constructive way. Explain how the problems affect you, how the problems could be resolved, and the results you expect to see with these changes implemented.

Learn more about how to stay motivated and efficient while working from home here.

In Conclusion

Like with in-office positions, burning out is possible when working from home. However, by ensuring employees are working regular hours and know what the expectations for work are, the stress and anxiety that leads to burnout is decreased. Additionally, as long as employees know that they can bring any questions and concerns they have to management, the risk of employee burnout should be drastically diminished.

Even employees themselves can take steps to ensure they are motivated and stress free, reducing the chance of burn out, when working remotely.