Productivity is the beating heart of all business. It is critical in determining the efficiency in which tasks and goals are completed for the business. In recent times, employees ability to be productive from home has been questioned across a large majority of working sectors. Traditionally, remote workers have had a bad reputation as employers believed that employees working from home would be too easily distracted. However, due to the global pandemic outbreak, employers were forced to have their employees working remotely.
This new trend in the workplace is expected to increase over the foreseeable future which has led to many studies into productivity issues and solutions for remote workers. Here are some of the key findings from these studies:
Issues with working from home
Finding a healthy work-life balance
For many people, home is a safe place away from public and work. Hence why having that part of their life invaded by work can be a bit of a shock. Workers may find it hard to establish a good balance between work and personal life, leaving the line between these areas damaged. Therefore, leading to an increased stress level. This is because employees become scared to take time off work for personal downtime due to the guilt associated with appearing to be doing not enough work.
Access to adequate space
For many remote workers, access to an adequate space for a home office is an issue. Many people have their home office set up in the kitchen, bedroom, or in any corner of the house they could fit a desk. Not having a good space for a home away from all the distractions in the kitchen or bedroom, often leads to a lack of productivity.
Employee Isolation
As human beings we are social animals and working from home eliminates a large majority of the interaction we gain through work colleagues. This has many negative affects and even if an employee appreciates the isolation at first, long term it often leads too many mental health issues.
Lack of trust
Many employees feel as if their managers/employers don’t trust them due to the increased monitoring a lot of employers implement to employees work progressions throughout the week. While this can help keep employees on top of their work, it can lead to resentment towards higher ups in the organisation.
Solutions to issues faced
Recognised ‘downtime’
Employers should give employers recognised downtimes throughout the day and agree that they will not contact the employee for any non-urgent matters during these time periods.
Key Performance Indicators
To avoid being overly intrusive of employees movements throughout the working day, employers should move towards implementing goal-orientated key performance indicators. This way employers would only have to check that the employees were hitting the target goals for a set period of time.
Regular team meetings
To ease the feeling of being isolated, employees could try and have more team meetings and/or catchups over a video calling service. This way employees can be reminded consistently that they are still part of a team and have that bit of socialisation that is missing when working from home.
The Pure Solution
Having an office in a dedicated indoor/outdoor living space has many health and productivity benefits. Recent studies by the National Institute of Health (NIH) has proved that interacting with nature not only reduces stress but also improve both cognitive and memory abilities. This is due to the attention mechanisms in the brain that are awaken when in nature. The PURE MINI 6 is the perfect solution to the productivity issues that come with not having a dedicated office space when working from home.
A major downside of working from home is all the distractions. Having an office space that is separated from the main living space eliminates the amount of distractions that are available at home. Having that space away from the house creates a quiet working zone to increase your ability to focus on your work.
The floor to ceiling glass in the MINI 6 allows for plenty of natural lighting to come in, increasing the amount of vitamin d you get, improving your overall mood. Since the pod is your designated office, adding personal touches to boost productivity becomes significantly easier.
Having your own personal office space allows you to add personal touches such as smart storage solutions, plants, memorabilia, art, etc. By doing this, your productivity can increase due to the feeling that a personal safe space that is specifically for working implants in your brain.
Check out the MINI 6 details here https://purehomes.com.au/pure-mini/