According to a Harvard Business School and New York University study carried out in several countries including France, telecommuting employees are more productive than face-to-face with 48 minutes on average of additional working time. A figure that is not surprising. No transport time, less time to prepare, a lunch often taken on the go, and less informal discussions with a colleague crossed at the bend of a corridor … “As a manager, I am less in demand, I have fewer meetings and email exchanges allow me to be more direct … It saves me time“, rejoices Christophe, public finance executive.
However, teleworking is singled out for a certain imbalance that it causes in the lives of working people. The first confinement, which took place last March, was particularly difficult for parents of young children, faced with the closure of nurseries and schools. Julie, journalist, experienced it on this occasion, she who looked after her two daughters aged two and five at home. “The implementation of telework – and its progress – was complex. There was nothing clear from my employer, with a facade understanding about child care.. After three days, I was put on sick leave because I was not working enough. From there, I worked evenings and many nights to be successful in producing and being profitable. Impossible for me during the day with two young children“, she recalls.
This testimony, far from being isolated, illustrates in extreme conditions the difficulty of separating the private sphere from the professional sphere when the pressure at work is high. The debate is not new. In 2019, well before the health crisis, 30% of French employees felt that they were not satisfied with their work-life balance *. “The first period of confinement exacerbated the problems posed for years by the organization of teleworking, in particular the question of companies’ confidence in their employees., abounds Solène Brost, neuropsychologist and founder of the SharZen platform. It should also be noted that this teleworking was not a choice of comfort on the part of the workers, but imposed and sudden, which is very different from teleworking at the request of the employee.“.
A lack of confidence on the part of employers
If this second confinement is, for many parents, including Julie, more serene this time with children at school, telework is not without constraints for those who exercise it on a daily basis. As evidenced by the increase in depression, with loneliness, isolation and especially professional exhaustion on the bench. While teleworking should improve our daily lives, it comes with a permanent connection. “Because they feel a lack of confidence on the part of their manager, employees will all the more show that they are working and have difficulty cutting“, continues Solène Brost.
This flexibility of working time provokes on the side of some managers the temptation to ask more employees outside office hours. By removing the temporal benchmarks that existed in our classic days, teleworking establishes new implicit rules which lead to this confusion between professional and private life. “By working late at night, because the children are in bed and we are finally quiet, we send the wrong signal: to be available, continues the neuropsychologist. It is also one of the weaknesses of smartphones, where we very often consult our professional messaging services, including outside of hours.“.
This permanent meeting between pro and personal has very concrete consequences. “In principle, I do not respond to late requests but I fall behind and I miss subjects that my colleagues attribute to themselves outside of working hours “, continues Julie who confides to have hated this period. “I felt like I was no match for my family or my job.” A double guilt that must be taken seriously.
Partition space and time
The first rule to separate personal and professional life is, of course, to disconnect as much as possible. Disconnection is essential … and it must be total. Professional accounts of course, such as messaging, but also anything that can relate to one’s profession, such as certain social networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter. And at the end of his working day, we store our equipment in a dedicated place.
Because confinement disrupts routines, it is as important to establish your own benchmarks, starting by marking the start of the day with a symbolic installation at your workstation, then maintaining meal times at a fixed time, as we are alone or in pairs and why not tea or coffee breaks, as we would normally. “I recommend ‘cut-off’ activities to switch from one to the other, like decompression chambers, explains Solène Brost. It can be a coffee, or a glass of water or even a game on your phone or an article that you really want to read, she lists. These moments also make it possible not to transmit negative energy from one sphere to another, it is five minutes that allow you to sort things out.“.
We know that certain tasks of daily life must nevertheless be accomplished – laundry, cleaning, meals … – and when working from home, the temptation to be on all fronts is great. We can optionally agree to dedicated airlocks. Twenty minutes at a fixed time can be enough to accomplish small chores and not feel like you are overwhelmed by what needs to be done. Ditto for professional tasks: you can make a list of things to do every morning – while being realistic about your abilities – and especially give yourself a deadline. And we stick to it.
But these everyday gestures and reflexes can only be carried out if the manager or boss maintains a relationship of trust, kindness, availability, but also listening to prevent possible disturbances. Thus, it may be relevant to limit videoconferences, which, by penetrating the privacy of the employee, can be perceived as intrusive. “Like an office meeting, a teleconference should be scheduled in advance“, recalls Solène Brost. The key is also found in human resources. “The company must be very careful with overload, and over-presenteeism. The first rule is trust and it is also essential to give employees clear and precise instructions and objectives, with a predefined time“.
Note that it is quite possible to organize lunches with colleagues or breakfasts. The important thing is to find a satisfactory balance between the life we led before and the establishment of new rules that make us happy. Because it is fundamental that this saved time be used to fill something that we lack on a daily basis, such as sleep, time for leisure or for oneself.
* BVA – BPI Group barometer on QWL
Also read:
- Telework: you are less creative, even if you work more
- When working from home, the checklist of actions to avoid for your physical and mental health
- Teleworking: the right anti-pumping gestures
