Healthy Habits for Sustained Remote Work Productivity

Struggling with remote employee absenteeism? Wondering why your company’s productivity has hit a downward trend?

Even seemingly harmless issues, like poor posture due to non-ergonomic home office furniture, can cause serious consequences to workers’ physical health if left unaddressed. Other complications that often come up due to WFH-associated sedentary lifestyle include extra weight, cardiovascular and digestive issues, and sleep problems.

Furthermore, poor physical health and lack of work-life balance can exacerbate stress, burnout, and decreased motivation.

What’s the final result? Reduced productivity of your remote teams, potential increase in employee turnover, and inevitable financial loss for your company.

So, ask yourself again—how adapted are your company’s health plans and well-being initiatives to the needs of your remote teams?

This article explains how you can help your employees stay healthy by employing simple but effective strategies supported by computer monitoring software.

Remote Workers’ Health & Productivity Challenges

Your remote workers can be affected by different productivity killers. If left unresolved, these challenges can bring down the revenue of your business faster than you would expect:

Inappropriate Home Office Set-Up

Many WFH employees delay creating an ergonomic workspace due to financial expenses. Consequently, 61.2% of people working remotely develop musculoskeletal discomfort, according to a study published by MDPI. This untreated physical discomfort quickly starts affecting your employees’ concentration and productivity daily.

Consequence: From 2022 to 2023, the UK saw a loss of 6.6 million workdays as a result of 27% of workers suffering from musculoskeletal disorders.

Improper Care for Physical Wellbeing

Remote work has been linked to an exceedingly sedentary lifestyle and the loss of discipline. WFH employees frequently reach for unhealthy snacks, which leads to weight gain, cardiovascular issues, and other health problems. Not having to get up early for their commute, they also tend to stay late, disrupting their sleeping hygiene.

All these issues lead to a drop in energy, productivity, and innovative thinking.

Consequence: It is estimated that employers lose around $530 billion every year due to employee health issues and consequent productivity drops.

Fatigue from Overwork

Remote workers are often under implicit pressure from their management to “always be on”—both during and outside their shift. Some leaders feel their employees “owe them” this since they are allowed to work remotely. What they don’t realize is that they are inadvertently pushing their team members into burnout and mental strain, significantly decreasing their productivity.

Consequence: Harvard and Stanford professors have proven that employee burnout cuts company productivity, reduces revenue, and causes additional physical and psychological employee healthcare costs. The latter range between $125 billion to $190 billion.

Multitasking

Despite many people seeing it as a useful skill, multitasking is bad for productivity. This practice is based on rapid switching between different tasks. This means many interruptions to your employees’ focus and many refocusing periods. In short, multitasking slashes employee productivity instead of improving it.

Consequence: With every task switch, your employees need 23 minutes to refocus. One study has shown that productivity lost due to this way of working can cost companies over $450 billion annually.

4 Strategies to Help Your Employees Stay Healthy & Productive

Your employees’ physical and mental health issues will inevitably undermine your company’s productivity. Letting your exhausted employees go is just a short-term solution and can end up costing you even more, considering the recruitment and onboarding expenses.

To reduce employee turnover and keep all your expenses and losses under control, take a look at the following suggestions:

1. Help Your Employees Create a Dedicated & Ergonomic Workspace

Advise your employees to create a nook dedicated solely to their work, with comfortable office furniture that will prevent them from acquiring musculoskeletal issues:

• Chair: Advise buying an ergonomic chair that offers good support to their back and has adjustable height.
• Desk: The best option for a desk is also an adjustable height desk for maximum comfort.
• External Keyboard/Screen: If your employees work on laptops, they will need one of these gadgets to keep their bodies in a neutral position.

All these adjustments should allow them to keep their elbows at 90 degrees on the desk, i.e. keyboard when sitting upright. Their knees should also be at 90 degrees with their feet completely on the floor. To prevent neck strain, the top of their screens should be at eye level.

Offer to reimburse at least a part of the expenses to encourage them to buy ergonomic furniture and improve their physical health

2. Advise Proper Care of Physical Health

While you can’t do much to “make” your employees take good care of their physical health, you can share some advice on this subject:

• Move Regularly: Suggest they start their days with a short exercise routine. Also, remind them to take breaks during the day. Getting up at least once an hour and stretching for a few minutes can significantly improve circulation and get the ideas flowing.
• Stick to a Routine & Get Enough Sleep: Talk to your employees about the benefits of regular and sufficient rest. Encourage them to sign out at the appropriate time and avoid staying extra hours. This way, they can decompress before bed and maintain a healthy sleeping and resting rhythm.
• Stay Hydrated & Eat Healthily: Remind your employees of the benefits of eating healthy food and staying hydrated. Encourage them to take proper lunch breaks that will allow them to have a proper nutritious meal instead of grabbing a quick and handy snack.

3. Provide Support for Work-Life Balance Maintenance

Work-life balance is essential for maintaining mental health while working remotely.

Your employees can’t physically leave their office. This is why you should encourage them to unplug after their shift finishes and avoid staying extra hours unless it’s absolutely necessary. Working overtime day after day destroys work-life balance and can quickly lead to burnout.

To keep your workforce safe from burnout, you can rely on a powerful employee computer monitoring software. These tools can detect early signs of burnout, including staying extra hours, reduced productivity, and frequent sick leaves. Keep track of your team and provide timely support to employees who are struggling to avoid employee attrition and related expenses.

4. Encourage Your Employees to Use Time Management Techniques

Since we now know multitasking leads nowhere, it’s important to help your employees lose this dangerous habit. The best way to do this is by helping them adopt new, productive, ways of organizing their time:

• Time Blocking: Creating a daily schedule with a few blocks for undisturbed work. Each block is dedicated to a particular project or task.
• Task Batching: Scheduling time blocks where each block is reserved for a few similar tasks, so there is no fluctuation in focus.
• Pomodoro: Designed for people who prefer short bursts of focused work, intertwined with short breaks, Pomodoro involves 25-minute focus periods followed by 5-minute breaks.
• “Eat That Frog”: This technique was presented in the book of the same name written by Brian Tracy. It focuses on setting priorities and scheduling the most urgent and demanding tasks as the first ones on daily to-do lists.

Computer monitoring apps can, among other things, help you ensure everyone is making an effort to switch to new habits. By automatically analyzing everyone’s daily activities and work styles, these apps can help you spot employees who are struggling with adopting new habits. This way you can openly address any issues they are facing and help them become more productive.

Jump-start your employee well-being initiatives and strategies with the strategies and tools above and substantially reduce your company’s healthcare and turnover costs.

This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics disclosure policy.