Research-based advice for staying healthy and productive while working remotely

by Sonia Jaffe (opens in new tab)

Research is evolving and we are still learning, but based on what we’ve seen in the research (opens in new tab) so far, here are some tips for working from home.

Put in the effort to stay connected

Staying connected with colleagues is harder when we do not see them in person (page 23 (opens in new tab)). Part of successfully working-from-home is making the intentional effort to connect and reconnect. It’s not just about connecting with your team for projects you are collaborating on, it’s about your well-being and contribution to the company. Social capital and other measures of social connection are associated with better health, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job involvement, organizational identification, and knowledge exchange.

Here are some things to try:

• Small group lunches or ‘social channels’ in Teams
• 1-on-1 catchups / coffees
• If you are a manager, make it clear to your team that activities that build and bridge social ties are a central part of the team’s work.

Be intentional about modes of communication

Without the ability to stop by a colleague’s desk, people are turning to IMs, emails, and unscheduled calls (page 21 (opens in new tab)). These make remote collaboration possible, but some people feel overwhelmed by the number of different channels and the volume of communication. Be sure to communicate with your colleagues about what your communication preferences are (and ask about theirs)

• What types of questions are good to ask over IM and which are better kept for email?
• What times of day are you available for meetings? For IMs?
• Do you prefer meetings in a row or time between meetings?
• If collaborating across time zones, how will your team share the burden of early/late meetings?
• How frequently do you want to update each other on progress – either in a meeting or asynchronously (see below)?

Make the most of your meetings

Remote meetings can be more tiring than in-person (page 10 (opens in new tab)). Here are some tips for efficient and effective scheduling and running of remote and hybrid meetings. Highlights include:

• Meeting should have clear goals and agendas to meet them.
• Consider replacing some meetings with asynchronous collaboration.
• Teams channels/chat and document collaboration are more searchable than meetings and give people have more time to consider questions and answers. Create a place that everyone is expected to update regularly and is considered the ground truth.
• If some attendees are remote, consider making a hybrid meeting all-remote, with everyone joining from their own device instead together in a conference room to level the playing field.
• Encourage parallel chat that allows more voices to be heard and amplifies the meeting’s main audio-visual, e.g links, on-point questions, clarification, requests for follow-up, etc.

Don’t forget to move (& schedule breaks)

When working in an office, most of us got at least a little bit of movement walking to/from their office and between rooms for meetings. Much of that is lost when the ‘office’ is in the living room and all meetings are conference calls (page 24 (opens in new tab)).

• Scheduling meetings to start at 5 min past the hour or half hour can give you time to stand up and walk around a bit. (In Outlook, you can set the default to do this automatically.)
• If you have meetings where you don’t need to be at your computer screen, try standing / walking around the room, or even going for a walk around the block.
• Take advantage of the work-from-home buying program to make sure you have a good ergonomic setup so being at your desk all day is less taxing.

Plan your work/life boundaries (both space and time)

When working in the office we have a natural separation between ‘work space’ and ‘home space’. Moreover, commuting provides a boundary between ‘work time’ and ‘home time’ (page 22 (opens in new tab)) When working from home, we have to create our own boundaries.

• Go for a short walk around the block ‘to your office’ in the morning and ‘to home’ in the evening to help you mentally transition. (Soon you’ll be able to schedule a virtual commute (opens in new tab) in Teams.)
• Use quiet hours in Teams to turn of notifications outside your working hours.
• Use the Work profile on your Android device to control Teams & Outlook notifications in one place.
• Share your work calendar with people in your household to minimize interruptions.

For more information about staying productive and taking care of yourself during remote and hybrid work, see the guides (opens in new tab) (based on our research) from support.office.com. Organizations can use this workplace transformation site template (opens in new tab) to help their employees.