The Rules of Promoting a "Work from House"?Mindset

“Love and work — work and love — that’s all there is.”?

With that simple idea a century ago, Freud offered us a somewhat prophetic view of what he saw as the cornerstones of the human experience. The family, friends, and relationships that we form in life plus our various forms of work.?

That’s it. This — to Freud — makes us us.

This idea is pretty nicely aligned to the way we think about Work Life Balance (WLB). As long as we can find that happy place between work and all of the rest of life, things should be fine. We’ll be happy. “That’s all there is.”

But Work from Home (WFH) really blurs the lines of WLB.

It’s not work from house, it’s home.?

More than just any place, so many of us are now working from where the love part of our life happens. As lines blur, those “cornerstones” of the human experience might get a little too close for comfort.

What’s happening in that tightening space of full time WFH life is interesting.

Employee burnout is at a fever pitch . Anxiety at work, job scopes expanding, clarity decreasing, immature WFH culture , hours getting stretched… all of this plays a part.?

Stress, and how we’re dealing with that stress, is becoming a theme .

One in four(ish) of us wants to quit our job right now. That might include you. Salaries, of course, are a factor (economic stress) but the big culprit is simple unhappiness with things-as-they-are.?

Our new normal, apparently, is still a little shaky as we find our feet.

To do that, companies are investing big time into benefits and programs to fight back against the Big Quit’s tide.?

Wellness benefits (services like telemedicine, counseling, meditation apps, etc.) and flexible work hours are the biggest weapons in the fight .?

The thinking here is straightforward:?

Show we care about wellness (employees respond well to this) and make some room for at-home commitments like family and other distractions.

But looking at the outcomes, are we really solving the right thing?

Not all WFH is created?equal

The data shows that most people prefer remote options when job hunting. People like remote.?

This is especially true for Millenials, Gen Z, and the younger Gen-Xers who collectively make up the majority of that WFH workforce. WFHers tend to be more optimistic and satisfied with their careers in general too.?

And, yet, compared to their on-site peers, these same groups are also 2X as likely to be unhappy with their job and highly stressed out. Burnout in the WFH group is higher than hybrid and in-office peers, but people like remote working over all.?

What gives?

See the actual source material for the ‘more optimistic’ study linked above. Indeed, optimism is high but WFHers aren’t all that happy with their overall WLB and performance is suffering.

In other words, enjoying the idea of WFH may not equal happiness with how it’s being done today. Here’s how ADP Research put it:

“While workers are surprisingly upbeat surrounding job satisfaction and outlook for the next five years, stress at work has reached critical levels, [exacerbated] by a trend that was already in motion prior to the pandemic. The impact on workers professionally, as well as personally, is profound and employers have taken?notice”

Workers want this New Normal but they want it built-to-order, crafted and structured with today’s context in mind. Not yesterday’s context.?

Many companies that aren’t WFH-native are solving for a ‘New Normal’ that may be better named the ‘new-place-you-work-and-we-guess-youre-still-stressed-over-covid’.?

They haven’t changed the fundamentals of how they operate to really work for a WFH world. That’s wrecked WLB for their teams and fueled the burnout crisis we see today.

This is the real problem to be solved.?

To get WLB right, we need to look at what’s happening in our heads ??.

Our many selves and what it means to?balance

Obviously, WLB is a pretty diluted way to see things. We don’t just “balance” work and all of the rest of life.?

We have relationships, hobbies, spirituality, our physical health, experiences, causes we care about, family, learning, community, R&R, dumb little passions and so much more.?

Run through Maslow’s hierarchy and you have an effective framing for how we spend our time. We have many things.

Contemporary psychology gives us a few concepts that highlight just how critical this grab-bag of ‘things’ might be when it comes to how we inevitably feel.?

• Self Concept - The general theory covering how we see ourselves, who we want to be, and how we feel about ourselves. Self Esteem is the superego’s subjective opinion on this Self Concept — so just the last part. Essentially: the person in the mirror, the person we’d like to see, and how we feel about the distance between the two.?
• Self Complexity - The theory that suggests that our whole self-image is formed by a complex collection of things that make us up. That includes the social roles we play, our biggest personal goals, our relationships, core beliefs and more.

As it turns out, higher self complexity not only impacts how we view ourselves, it’s directly tied to how we evaluate and manage stress .?

Complexity promotes self esteem by providing a more holistic, less vulnerable, total self image. We like to be made of many things and we like those things to be different from one-another. Variety, after all, is the spice of life.?

WFH puts up an obvious challenge to this. The hats are looking too similar.

• Work time is less defined: Flexible hours are tethering more time to work
• Work self looks the same as other selves: People aren’t sure how to dress for work anymore , pants optional
• Days are lacking structure: No initiation and closure-WFHers don’t get the benefits of a commute
• Interacting with work peers in same place as family: Some are pushing for more ‘familiar’ ties in the name of culture
• Work space is becoming a nonexistent thing: Office space used to get optimized , now 40% work from bed

This is all bad news for our identities and stress-coping mechanisms. Severance seems to really matter.

Back in the 80’s, Claude Steele kicked off the whole — sometimes misinterpreted — Self Affirmation movement with his research on the complex self and how we handle stressful moments.?

Steele showed that we effectively alleviate our stress response to high-pressure situations by bringing awareness (“I AM A GOOD PERSON”) to various parts of our lives. Parts, importantly, that aren’t related to the immediate stress that we’re experiencing.?

For those of us more naturally balanced in our lifestyles, this kind of stress management (and performance) comes easily. The more dynamic we are, the more qualities and self-beliefs we can call on to mitigate stress and motivate behavior.?

When it comes to jobs, maybe it’d be better to say Work Life Ratio, instead of Balance. At some point, too much work in the mix kills the outcomes.?

When organizations begin to understand this and embrace the whole individual , the outcomes look measurably better.

It’s exactly what many organizations are getting wrong today.?

Getting it right requires a fundamental shift in the way employees are engaged, enabled, and managed in their work. Get those cost-savings and productivity boosts of a strong WFH team without burnout and attrition inevitably sparking the opposite.?

Okay, yeah, but how?

A three pronged approach for getting WFH?right

Some of you were already thinking this, but stating the obvious:?

It is entirely possible to do this WFH thing well. Plenty of people W’d-FH successfully, happily, and resiliently long before Covid 19. They still do.

Remote life champion, Tim Ferriss , showed that we could get more done in a remote world and thrive because of it. His seminal 4 Hour Work Week, published way back in 2007, inspired a whole generation of remote workers by focusing squarely on the separation of powers that we’re talking about here.

Hundreds (thousands?) of companies were — and are still — getting it right as well. So why isn’t WFH working for so many?

Inevitably, it comes down to culture.?

Organizations that get this right were mostly built with WFH as part of the model — it’s in their DNA. Everything from operations to the talent they hired was done with this in mind.?

It’s difficult to just switch this kind of culture on when it was never there pre-Covid-19. This is especially true now that managers are debating what comes next, and if WFH will even last. Buy-in matters.?

Here’s a framework that might push better outcomes:

1. Pursue a WFH native culture: Establish and implement cultural principles that protect WLB and captures the best of WFH
2. Optimize WFH performance: Put attention on processes and tools that may be hindering WFH performance while making productivity more measurable
3. Try to resolve intrinsic stress: Continue investing in wellness programs to mitigate built-in stresses of WFH while the rest is being worked out

Most companies today are doing a great job at #3 and failing at the rest. Let’s dig into each to explain more.

Starting from the?Simplest

#3: Try to resolve intrinsic stress

No doubt, helping teams to offset the built-in stresses of WFH is a big deal in 2022.?

Wellness apps and services are still the #1 top trending employee benefit category and employees do generally appreciate these things.?

Breath in, breath out.?

It’s a little too easy, isn’t it?

It sure would be unfortunate if employees aren’t actually using these services ...?

When fighting back against burnout, we have to be careful about how prominent these services are in our whole plan of attack.?

Naturally, this category got a ton of interest in 2020 when the general societal stress levels were existential. Companies, smartly, put benefit package focus on these services because there was little else to do.?

It wasn’t WFH and corporate culture causing the stress — it was just Covid.?

But (hot take) people don’t much worry about Covid-19 anymore .?

The peak stress that we’re dealing with now is more that awkward phase of our new normal. That’s the source.

It’s great to keep offering these benefits, especially in that awkward phase, and they’re a good sign of the company’s interest in wellness . Just be smart about it. These apps and services are nothing more than a bandaid on their own. Ask if they’re working, know how that’s measured, and invest in what shows results.?

#2: Optimize for WFH performance

The key to this category is to look at it as optimization, not allowance.

Optimization is not only about making WFH more comfortable for people. It’s about implementing structures that are fit for modern working and enable people to do more for the company.?

• Be radically transparent about any monitoring: This APA report digs into this particular topic quite a bit. People generally find monitoring threatening and it might increase workplace stress. If you’re doing it, be open about it and clear about how, why, when and where. Employees appreciate this . Trust and WFH go hand in hand.
• Be radically clear, concise, and measurable: Goal setting structures like SMART goals and OKRs are especially critical for WHF. Flexible hours tend to creep flexibly into the rest of life. The more specific team member job descriptions and goals become, the more efficiently they can self manage their time at home.?There’s a reason engineering teams, entrepreneurs, and certain creative roles have embraced WFH for years now — they set clear, deliverable goals, and know when they’re accomplished. Laptop, shut.?
• Emphasize Core Competency: High performers might help lean WFH teams thrive but they also burn out faster if not carefully managed. For all team members, clearly define roles by core competency and ensure that the right owner is handling the right part of the job. Invest in tooling that can offset some of the load where competencies are lower (as an example, all of the illustrations in this article were done in about 10 minutes by an AI).
• Institutionalize Recognition (← Better than ‘celebration’): Inviting employees to become a part of the mission — what’s working, what’s not, how to grow — is critical in WFH. Through team standups, manager meetings, chat channels, etc., invite your teams to discuss WFH and provide accountability for agreed-upon changes.
• Get intensive about the technologies teams use: Consider the entire remote employee experience and the tools that are a part of their remote lives. What are the categories of apps, tools and platforms that teams are using each day? Are they useful, high quality, and consistent??

Remember, this is all about optimizing for performance. Center on data, have clear and attainable goals, and involve team members in this ongoing process.?

#1: Pursue a WFH native?culture

There’s a common, often misunderstood trope in our WFH era to ‘bring your entire self’ to work.?Being 100% authentic is great, but nobody needs to bring their entire life into work.

Many of the companies getting this right today were culturally built for WFH pre-Covid. They understand the boundaries required to realize the benefits.

• More than flexible, get time managed: Flexibility is great but take steps to ensure that it doesn’t just become ‘more hours’. Establish collaborative expectations for each team member based on their role. Set clear ‘available and unavailable’ hours that make sense in their lives. This is better than ‘start and end’ times.?
• Me Days: Unlimited PTO and flexible-use ‘personal days’ are nothing new. If your company is WFH but still isn’t working towards this structure, consider the tide . These benefits not only attract talent, they’re shown to improve productivity while also emphasizing higher trust. Just make sure to do it right.
• Strong App Governance: 24/7 email notifications, chats, and calls aren’t great for WLB. Your teams hate this part of WFH and good IT governance might help solve for it. Explore rules and even system changes to protect your teams from over-inundation.?
• Broaden Benefits: Emphasize WLB by looking at more flexible lifestyle benefits covering things like travel, education, home & family expenses, hobbies, and more. Some programs provide flexible spending accounts while others target these areas specifically. Bundle and communicate these benefits as part of your Wellness initiative.
• Enrich the Work Life, just don’t be invasive: It’s a bit TBD still but, so far, we’ve not exactly returned to the familiar office party seasons that we had pre-pandemic. What a shame. Remember that while this article emphasizes the L side of WLB, the W side matters plenty too. As Covid 19 concerns ease, consider IRL options to meaningfully connect people.?
• Make this Everybody’s Job: One recent study found that the highest valued mental wellness benefit for wellness-conscious employees is simply to have an open culture about it. Make the emphasis on WLB and the mission to build a healthy WFH cultural. Show it from the top down.
• Emphasize Individuality, Inclusivity, and Diversity: Diversity and inclusivity programs must play a role in any conversation about mental wellness in the workplace. Engage with experts to influence program direction while continuing to listen and learn from teams.?
• Support for Office Spaces: Some research suggests that physical space may not only be something we should optimize for work — as we’ve done for decades — it’s also connected to our individual social roles themselves. Consider ways to help employees establish a dedicated, flow-focused home workspace through home office benefits, supplies, guidance and more.?

Zooming out

The language that we’ve been using this year to talk about the job market is interesting. The Great Resignation , The Big Quit , The Great Reshuffle .?

As we’ve discussed here, maybe those phrases place the blame on the wrong party. Is it the talent resigning or the current WFH arrangement that we need to tackle??

Let’s just call it ‘The Great Growing Pain’. Something that we’re, still, all in together.

Getting a little bit more ‘Work from House’ in our thinking can do wonders. Setting boundaries that embrace the whole individual, heightened trust coupled with accountability, and open dialogue all support the long-term health and productivity of a remote workforce.?

Many organizations are doing well here already. My own organization, Cognizant, is one of these. Remote work was built into our model many years before 2020 — simply due to the nature of our business — and our culture, tools, and processes underpin our effectiveness here.?

But even we are always improving.?

The last few years have highlighted so many opportunities while also changing some fundamentals of what people need *and want* to do their best work — so we’ve changed with them.?

Continuous improvement matters, WFH and everywhere else. Be careful with any absolutist guidance on getting this perfectly and forever right. Just listen and learn.?

We’ve discovered a lot about ourselves and each other these past few years. Business goals have evolved and amplified but so have our own. As we get more into tune with what really matters, supporting WLB becomes more than an employee benefit — it’s performance management.?

Connect those business goals to the employee's goals and watch the results.

P.S. The stuff here about Self Concept, variety in lifestyle, and performance optimization is a passion of mine. I'm building some things for practicing "Selfness" after years of combatting (and mostly beating) bouts of high generalized anxiety and self-doubt spawned by comically poor lifestyle balance. Selfness is an action-oriented, decisive approach to wellness that impacts how you live. If interested in keeping up with that, consider the follow button.