It’s been some time since my last Business Review and I’ll be honest, it’s because I’ve been experiencing a lot of disruptions to my usual working day. That may seem strange to say, during a pandemic where we have all been working from home and enjoying the freedoms that has given us. For me though, I’ve found 18 months of home working hard.
Working from home definitely doesn’t suit us all. Prior to the pandemic, a European study showed that 41% of remote workers reported a higher level of stress, compared to only 25% of full-time office workers. However, Mental Health America in 2018 found that 71% of people would like to work from home to reduce commute related stress. It’s safe to say, there’s no one size fits all, and here at BRITE, we’ve always been a team that’s geographically dispersed.
I work with a team that manages their own hours, decides where they want to be, and what hours their work will be done. And it absolutely works for us. However, Covid-19 created a different experience.
We’ve found the pandemic hasn’t provided us with normal “work from home” circumstances. For a huge portion of the pandemic, my children were at home which meant I had to balance homeschooling and the interruptions with people being in the house, with my working day. Concentration and focus went out the window which meant tasks took longer to achieve.
Managing my team at BRITE and working for my clients wasn’t the only work I’ve needed to balance. I took a course in Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cambridge during 2020 and also taught MBA students at Instituto de Empresa of Madrid about the link between marketing and sustainability. The past 18 months have been a balancing act of all elements of a busy work and home life.
I’m not alone in thinking this. When Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, confirmed that he would not expect colleagues to return to the office earlier this year it was not without criticism. The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, worried that working from home meant a lack of division between work and home life. Even Facebook's vice president of People Growth admitted that the pandemic has not created a period of “healthy remote work”. Juggling responsibilities and being cooped up with family members or housemates means that the working day is disrupted.
A recent Forbes article had one boss finding that their staff had difficulty preserving boundaries between personal and professional lives, many still online at 10 pm even though they worked the 9-5. Working longer doesn't always mean working more productively, and in fact, can lead to job burnout. Founders and HR Directors are therefore having to put measures in place to attempt to make the time staff are working more productive by ensuring there are fewer distractions and clear boundaries between work-time and home-time.
In France and Mexico workers now have a right to disconnect, meaning they can turn off work phones and emails so that it doesn’t encroach on personal time. What this demonstrates is the importance of boundaries. Not just work encroaching on life, but vice-versa. Whether it’s a child hanging off your arm, a dog begging for food, or you taking advantage of this flexibility and having a cleaner in, the work you produce in that time will not be as high quality, or simply you won’t get as much done. This means you work longer hours to get vital work created.
Recently, researchers at University College London surveyed 3,000 people and established that commuting is good for you. It may seem hard to believe, especially if you’re used to the busy tubes at rush hour and endless disruptions. However, really the commute is a perfect boundary where staff can flick a switch and transition from one to the other. This transition doesn’t need to require being packed like sardines on a commuter train, but could mean a walk, some exercise, or a short meditation to mimic the effect that a commute has on our wellbeing. Believe it or not, I found my studies in Sustainable Leadership a useful tool to step away from work and do something just for myself.
Now the BRITE team is entering into a new phase of hybrid working. We are still based remotely with professionals in Lithuania, Denmark, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands and myself here in London, but we have more freedom to work from anywhere, not always from home. My colleagues overseas will go back to work some of their days from co-working spaces and I will escape the chaos of my home with visits to The Conduit in Central London, which is open for any of my colleagues should they need. Socialising, seeing other people, and sharing ideas and inspiration are all things that have been lacking for us all, stuck behind a desk at home for the past 18 months.
I’m an international businesswoman who was living in Poland when I opened BRITE’s doors in 2017 and am now an Italian living in London. It may seem strange too, to suggest that working from home can be detrimental to productive working when that’s my business model, and has been for some time.
What I do endorse is working in a place that is distraction free, and setting clear boundaries between work and personal life as otherwise, our lives get far too blurred. Where my colleagues find it difficult to set clear boundaries and make the most of their work time I encourage them to ask for help. Where possible I want to be their advocate and mentor.
Mindfulness, exercise, and a healthy dose of self-care can ensure that working remotely still means working collaboratively and efficiently.
Chiara & Lula (the dog)