Keeping Personal, Work-Life Balance While Working From Home (WFH)

Keeping Personal, Work-Life Balance While Working From Home (WFH)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been both a hurdle and challenge to beat all the downside when the outbreak did start a couple of years ago. The wave whirled, shook & altered lives and their behavior to topsy-turvy.

There was a period that organizations are skeptical about providing Work From Home (WFH) to their employees. Now, it became a major part of how things are going to continue in the upcoming future too.

"If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down" 

- Gautama Buddha

Work-To-Personal role conflict is intermingled on few occasions and sometimes it's bi-directional: asymmetric working & personal time more evidently resulted in adversary in the past.  For example, overtime took away hours that a parent can spend with children resulting in work impact on the family. It is directly proportional that doctor appointments, sudden unavoidable personal occasions, illness of a family member may limit working hours resulting in family impacts on work.

The regular WFH consists of below activities: To wake up in the morning, cleanse the body, swiftly hair-do, changing into a Work From Home (WFH) outfit, intake tum adequate breakfast with a beverage, open and take a plunge into the laptop, send update on day's work, to-do list to colleagues, immerse into actualizing the plan. Work also includes intermittent personal coded breaks - to check social media feeds, SMS or personal calls from mobile, short snack crunching break. The aim is to respect the self-care routine and to keep up away from sulking into boredom.

Pandemic & WFH changed the way we think and operate earlier. Now there is no room for thoughts filled with money-fueled intentions: Increase bank balance, fish for property to buy, invest in retirement money, keep an eye on the share market, mutual funds, test the waters on digital marketing. They are not bad. Instead, a thorough thought if goals are specific and reap actionable outcome, then, devised action plan on achieving them will still yield fruits.

What are the major challenges with WFH & how to tackle them to keep a personal, work-life balance? 

1. Communication & visibility is limited by remote communication channels namely WebEx, Zoom, GTalk, VPN with dramatic gestures, itching earlobes and one feels he/she became more talkative. Allocating additional time in meetings and share portal check-ins, check-outs promptly, attempt to prove productivity, or unable to track work time due to no clear time boundaries. In fact, talking more is the right amount expected especially from WFH. All that makes matters worse is talking meaningless or no focus on result-driven.

2. Individual cope to personally devise time management, cross, upskill development hours is a paradigm shift during the era of WFH. Instead of craving to survive a career life, one should taste the joy of working determine how well he/she handle and play the role based on demands of work and in the family arena. Employee wellness matter even in a digital workspace that includes unnecessary meetings, emails, and tasks. If left unattended or not resolved for a longer time individual may undergo emotional stress, underachievement, lack of passion, gradual behavioral change in performing well.

3. To open conversations around mental well-being out into the open is not possible at wide-spectrum. Pandemic brought an abrupt change in the mode of work with the intensified extra load on employees, the organization has to will to look towards the wellness of employees through providing a day off, communicate to make sure employees that they are in the perimeter of support both as per policy standards, sharing of responsibilities in case of overwhelming workload, handling team dynamics. Also, there should be an exchange of ideas effectively through the virtual environment without any loss of details or help in need or attention to leap in.

4. Performing the assigned role of work emphasizes the dual processes of job demands and interacting, managing with/being managed by job resources. Holding focus and process information to befit role & job distribution to improve productivity at work.

5. No misconceptions towards employees who desire flexibility, especially working mothers, agency, contract, part-time employees, or people with disabilities as it piles up additional environmental wellness and culture to keep consistency in such challenging crisis time. 

5. Include the bullet items to exercise on Personal Development

• Handling things with balanced time, grow patience as the situation has imprisoned to bind within your home.

• Tune your mind ready to work independently as well as collaboratively with others

• Exhibit that you are trustworthy both at home as well as home

• Develop the habit of reading books & play indoor games

• Finally, meditation is a must because the cultivation of the mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence. 

Whatever personal hiccup or issue in work pop up, give rest, process, execute, retrospect and recharge. Resilience is the key to survive pandemics and the uncertainty of life. 

"No Matter How Hard Is The Past,

You Can Always Begin Again"

- Gautama Buddha