Work-Life Balance Strategies for Challenging Times

Adjusting to Remote Work During the Coronavirus Pandemic

1- Separating our personal and professional lives is increasingly difficult, particularly as many Americans are working from home as a result of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Many organizations have had to quickly alter their operating procedures and put practices in place to support employees working remotely. 

2- Discuss your view when it comes to working remotely. What types of adjustments have you or your organization had to make to support employees working from home? 

3- If you are essential personnel and required to report to work, discuss how that experience has been for you in the midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic.

4- 650 Are you able to turn work off after hours like some of the companies in the article? 

1-Burnout is leading to serious medical conditions. Individuals who are unable to manage stressful jobs coupled with stress in their personal lives suffer with serious illnesses like high blood pressure, anxiety, and insomnia. 

2-Add to that the Coronavirus pandemic! As we’re adjusting to working remotely or reporting to work as essential personnel, we’re facing more stress, anxiety, and uncertainty. 

3-Discuss at least two strategies that you would recommend to your employees to help improve their work-life balance during these challenging times. Consider ways in which you would encourage them to “disconnect” from work after hours.

1-Refer back to Chapter 7 of the textbook. In your own words, what is Emotional Intelligence ? 

2-Select two of Goleman’s major dimensions of EI and discuss why they are relevant in the workplace. 

3-Why do you think EI may be more important than IQ for an effective manager?

The proliferation of smartphones and workplace communication apps has created unrealistic expectations of how easily—and often—workers should be able to switch from personal to professional tasks, researchers say.  In an April survey by Chicago-area mental-health center Yellowbrick, 62% of 2,059 working adults between the ages 23 and 38 said they felt pressure to be available around the clock through email, Slack and other work-communication channels. A recent study by researchers at Virginia Tech, Lehigh University and Colorado State University found that even the expectation of checking work emails on weekends and after-hours triggered anxiety and other harmful health effects among workers.

A 2018 analysis conducted by Microsoft Corp. researchers of the Sunday-evening email habits of tens of thousands of managers at U.S. companies suggests why: Every hour a boss spent online translated to 20 extra minutes of work for his or her direct reports outside of normal business hours, the study found. The study used anonymized data from Microsoft’s email and meeting services and information from human-resources departments across several large companies. Even dwelling on work in the waning hours of the weekend can cause anxiety—a phenomenon so commonplace it has spawned the popular hashtag SundayScaries. In a LinkedIn survey of more than 1,000 working adults last fall, 80% said they experienced a surge in stress related to their jobs on Sunday nights. Among millennials, the share was even higher, at 91%.
Some employers are addressing off-hours work creep. At telecom company Bandwidth Inc. in North Carolina, a vacation-blackout policy bars employees from attending to business during time off—forcing its 700 employees, including its chief executive, to pause projects or equip colleagues with the resources to cover for them, if necessary.

Health-care consulting firm Vynamic created an email tool to divert messages sent after 10 p.m. into an electronic queue, to be delivered the next day at 6 a.m. The system, called zzzMail, goes dark Friday evenings until Monday morning. CEO Jeff Dill said Vynamic’s 140 employees almost always stick to the ban. “When you’re in an environment where there’s time for structured disengagement, you’re able to gauge more clearly if something can wait until the next morning or after the holiday,” he said. “And 99% of the time it can absolutely wait, we’ve found,” he said.