How Companies Are Trying to Reestablish Blurry Work-Life Boundaries
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Here's your Money Briefing for Friday, March 26th.
How did work-from-home blur boundaries one year into the pandemic?
I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. A year ago, millions of us had to figure out how to weave our workday into our life at home. Now, a year into remote working, the challenge facing a lot of people isn't when to work, but when to stop.
many people are kind of discovering that work is really always there, that it's an email or Slack message, it's easy to open your laptop and go to the kitchen table where you've been spending most of your day working.
So how have workers adjusted and what are companies doing to avoid burning out their staff? Our workplace reporter Chip Cutter has been looking into this and he'll be here to talk about it after the break.
This podcast is brought to you by ReliaQuest. Cyber criminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation.
Why do remote workers struggle to know when to stop working?
ReliaQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminates cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. ReliaQuest, agentic defense for the enterprise. Learn more at ReliaQuest.com. That's R-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T dot com.
A year into the pandemic and working from home, many people are still struggling with a fundamental task, when to close the laptop for the day. So what can workers do to maintain work-life boundaries? And what are companies doing about it? Chip Cutter covers workplace issues for The Wall Street Journal. He's been looking into this, and he joins me now. Chip, thanks for being here.
Hi, JR. Thanks.
So, Chip, you know, a year ago, a lot of people probably thought, yeah, working from home won't be too stressful. There'll be no one bothering me, no phone conversations going on around me.
Well, that's right. I think many thought that they could spend the extra hours that they used to spend commuting or going to the office, spending all of that on their personal health, on getting more physical fitness, on eating better. I think a lot of people had hopes that there might be some silver linings to this work-from-home reality. And what many had discovered over the past year is that they've just filled all this extra time with work, that they've just poured themselves into their jobs and now really struggle to figure out when work should stop. And I think that's been an issue across the corporate sphere, where many employees say that they just feel like there is now no clear end between the start and end of a day, and they just feel like they're just working constantly and feeling the effects of that.
Now, you've spoken to several people who've been working from home for the past year. What's the biggest challenge they're facing that's in the way of them achieving that balance?
many people are kind of discovering that work is really always there, that it's an email or Slack message, it's easy to open your laptop and go to the kitchen table where you've been spending most of your day working, that there's no longer that physical separation of space. And I think that's been hard for a lot of professionals. And I think what most people will also say is that the demands have increased, that because there are so many fewer opportunities to focus on leisure activities still, that work has taken up more time. And that has meant that the pressures have grown on employees from managers and others.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:38
2
How did work-from-home blur boundaries one year into the pandemic?
0:38–1:21
3
Why do remote workers struggle to know when to stop working?
1:21–4:03
4
What personal strategies are employees using to reclaim evenings and sleep?
4:03–8:00
5
How are companies changing routines to help employees set boundaries?
8:00–8:39
Speakers
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