RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Amid quarantine and widespread adoption of home office use, 62 percent of professionals are more anxious and stressed about their work than before. The data is from a LinkedIn survey of 2,000 professionals conducted in April.
According to respondents, the lack of interaction with co-workers has also been significant: 39 percent of them feel lonely, 30 percent say they are stressed by the absence of relaxation time at work, and 20 percent feel insecure due to difficulties in knowing how their colleagues and company are performing.
On the other hand, 33 percent of respondents consider they are more productive because of reduced interruptions linked to the office environment.
According to the survey, not only mental health is being affected by home office: 43 percent of respondents say they are exercising less and 33 percent say sleep has been negatively impacted.
In an interview, Milton Beck, LinkedIn’s CEO for Latin America, states that the current situation does not reflect a “conventional home office scenario”: “We are facing a scenario that breeds fear and anxiety due to uncertainty.
There are people who live alone and feel loneliness to a greater extent, and those who are with their family, who are affected by the interference of the home environment. These external and internal aspects can cause professionals to feel more anxious, concerned about performing all the daily tasks”, he says.
For Beck, there is a reversal of perception regarding the workplace. He believes in a mixed post-pandemic time: “Home office advocates are looking to return to the office and office supporters are realizing the benefits of the home office. So I believe in a middle ground, in which we will work in the office a few days and at home other days,” says the LinkedIn executive.
Overtime
With the quarantine and the complexity in adapting to the home office, many professionals began to work overtime longer than they did in the workplace.
According to the study, 68 percent of Brazilians working from home have worked at least one additional hour every day, while 21 percent of respondents work up to four extra hours a day.
The survey also found that 24 percent feel pressured to reply faster and be online longer than they would otherwise, while 18 percent believe that concern about showing they are busy at work is related to the fear of losing their job.
The pressure causes professionals to adopt certain behaviors to show that they are truly working at home: 27 percent of respondents say they send e-mails out of office hours.
Family and work
Another home office aspect is linked to the need to reconcile work and family: “34 percent of respondents are distracted by listening or watching news about Covid-19, 20 percent struggle to reconcile work and child care, and 22 percent find it challenging to work with their partner at home,” says the study.
But remote work has brought benefits in other aspects: over half of respondents (59 percent) say that time spent with their families has increased with quarantine, and 32 percent of all professionals say they have adopted a healthier diet.
Return?
Several companies have already announced that they intend to adopt the home office on a permanent basis or for an extended period in the post-pandemic world. Companies such as XP Inc., the PSA group (owner of Peugeot and Citroen), American Express are such cases.
Among respondents, 52 percent believe that contact with colleagues will be more common when they return to the office, 41 percent believe they will use technology more intensively, and 28 percent believe that anxiety will decrease because they will be able to interact with other people when they return to the office.
Beck says companies should offer help to minimize the impacts of the pandemic on employees’ mental health and strengthen internal communication channels, in addition to promoting constant research to monitor employees more closely.
“Fifty-eight percent of professionals currently working from home say their superiors can help them feel supported by providing more regular communications. Of this total, 40 percent say this can be achieved with more team video conferencing and another 27 percent say this could be done on an individual basis. Fluid communication helps to deal with uncertainty and thereby helps to keep team morale high,” says the executive.
Source: InfoMoney