Our homes are no longer just homes, and our offices are no longer just offices. For millions of people, remote work has permanently blurred the line between the two.
Employees have had years to settle into working from home, and they are not the only ones who have had to adapt. Managers and companies have had to rethink how work gets done when the team is spread across cities, time zones, and kitchen tables.
Remote work has given employees a taste of real flexibility, and they are not ready to part with it. That flexibility has become a baseline expectation rather than a perk.
So employers face a clear challenge: keep the business running efficiently while genuinely promoting a healthy remote work-life balance. Get it wrong, and you risk burnout, disengagement, and losing the people you worked hardest to recruit and retain.
In this guide, we will explore how to adapt to this reality, and how it reshapes the way we recruit, hire, and manage employees.
- What is a Gray Zone?
- How does remote work create the gray zone?
- The importance of balancing work and wellbeing
- Strategies for attracting, hiring, and managing remote employees
- Best practices for managing remote employees
- Adapting to a new era of work
What is a Gray Zone?
While this term can mean different things in different contexts, we’re using it to define a home working space with few to no barriers between work and everything else.
We live, work, sleep, eat, and try to relax in the same areas, the “gray zone.” For most remote workers there is no clean separation, so they improvise in their working space at home.
And how do they improvise? By carving out a small corner of their home to try and dedicate to work. Research found that the rooms remote workers use the most are:
- A home office: 32%
- Their bedroom: 31%
- Living room: 23%
- Kitchen: 9%
- Basement: 5%
Those of us who moved suddenly into remote work had to reorganize our homes to accommodate remote work almost overnight. The lines between workspace and “living” space were quickly blurred, and for many they have stayed that way.
Not everyone has the luxury of a separate office space in which to work, especially folks living in urban environments, and we have all had to make do with what we have available, for better or worse.
Not long ago, only 20% of employed adults in the US regularly worked from home. That share climbed sharply once remote work became widespread, and it has never fully receded, with 54% of employees saying they did not want to return to a traditional office environment.
Managers have to come to grips with recruiting and hiring a remote workforce while also helping their existing employees navigate a permanently blended way of working.
How does remote work create the gray zone?
When it comes to home working, many of us have to improvise. Workers who are lucky enough to have a spare room have repurposed these into home offices, while others make do with a corner of the kitchen or lounge.
Pew Research found that the main challenges for employees who moved to remote work include:
- Having the right technology or equipment
- Meeting deadlines
- Having an adequate workspace
- Being able to work without interruptions
- Feeling motivated to complete tasks
Employers must consider how best to meet their employees’ needs, whether through providing the right hardware and software or offering advice on how to set up a home workspace where there isn’t always room for a dedicated office.
Another thing employers need to be mindful of is their team’s mental health and well-being.
The importance of balancing work and wellbeing
When the boundaries between work and home blur, the chances of employees suffering from burnout can increase. It is tempting for employees to allow workplace responsibilities to run over into every other part of their day.
Balancing working from home and well-being is vital, and many remote employees don’t necessarily know how. Offer support and advice around maintaining a sense of control over the working day. Encourage your team to build habits that sustain motivation and productivity and boost morale.
This will look different for every team member. It could mean getting outside in nature, disconnecting from work at the gym, a DIY project, or anything else that helps your team feel replenished and refreshed after a long day.
Just as the way managers support their employees has changed, so have the ways those employees are recruited, hired, and managed.
Plenty of strategies are available to make this transition smoother for everyone.
Strategies for attracting, hiring, and managing remote employees
Navigating remote work brings challenges, but it also opens up plenty of new opportunities. When attracting, hiring, and managing remote employees, managers need to shift their strategies to make the most of this way of working.
Attracting remote employees
One huge advantage of offering remote work to new employees is opening up a whole new pool of talent. New hires don’t have to be in your physical location. They can be anywhere in the world.
That means taking a fresh look at your existing recruiting strategies so they reach this wider pool of talent.
For example, you may need to expand the places you advertise your open roles to include both global and local platforms.
Harnessing the power of social media can also help you tap into a new network of potential hires.
Hiring remote employees
If you aren’t expecting your new employees to work in an office location, they probably won’t have to make the trip there for an interview either.
Many HR teams and hiring managers now use remote interview tools to assess candidates. These can be synchronous, asynchronous, or a blend of both.
Hiring tools like SaaS platforms help HR managers see candidate status, so it’s easier to check in and optimize the hiring process.
A streamlined journey helps you secure the best talent by keeping your time to hire as short as possible. Across all industries, the average time to hire is between three and four weeks, yet top candidates often expect an offer within days of their interview.
If your hiring team takes too long to decide, that candidate will likely have accepted a role somewhere else by the time you get around to calling them.
Using video interview technology with integrated assessment tools, or the ability to highlight key moments for the hiring team to review, can drastically cut the time it takes to make a decision.
It also helps you run inclusive, effective interviews that focus on key skills rather than subjective opinions.
Managing remote employees
Once a new employee accepts an offer, it’s time to set a start date and begin onboarding. It’s a nervy moment for employees and employers alike.
Everyone is adjusting. Remote work can feel isolating, especially for a new employee, which makes early support even more important.
Following a remote employee onboarding process helps you stay on top of things and ensures your new hire knows what to do and when to do it.
A platform like Process Street, the Compliance Operations Platform, turns that onboarding process into a workflow that runs the same way every time, so no step is skipped when someone joins remotely. Every task is assigned, tracked, and auditable by default.
Check out this pre-made remote onboarding template to help you get started.
Best practices for managing remote employees
Here are our tips to help you successfully manage and retain remote employees.
Prioritize mindfulness and productivity
Employees can quickly find the combination of constant distractions and never-ending notifications overwhelming.
You may also need to invest in additional tools and software that encourage focus and productivity for asynchronous workers.
These can be tailored to each employee’s work style to offer support where and when it is needed.
Offer regular check-ins
While making sure your employees know they can always reach you, it’s just as important to emphasize, and model, the value of a healthy work-life balance.
For example, avoid sending emails outside of working hours, or use a scheduling tool to send out emails at the start of the working day.
For asynchronous teams, you can add an email signature stating something like “while it’s convenient for me to send this email now, I do not expect a reply outside your regular working hours.”
You might also open slots in your calendar for a brief catch-up call with employees who would like to connect regularly.
Be flexible yet organized
Remote work can let your employees switch their day around and complete work during the afternoon and evening.
Allowing employees to structure their own working hours can improve morale and demonstrate trust in their abilities. Even so, you have to stay organized to balance deadlines and keep everything running smoothly.
Communicate, communicate, communicate
Managing a team of remote employees is a different challenge from working together in a physical office. One of the main goals is still to keep open lines of communication.
A great strategy is to ask each employee which management style they prefer, and meet them on their terms. Some employees may resent twice-daily check-ins, while others will feel cut off if they don’t hear from you regularly.
Choosing the right team communication tools and finding the balance between too much and too little communication can be a challenge, but it’s worth it.
Listen to your team
Remember that communication goes both ways, so take the time to listen to what your team thinks, not just to direct communications at them. Informal surveys can be a good way to gauge your team’s morale.
Anonymous surveys are particularly useful, since they often encourage employees to share their thoughts more freely. And remember, if you ask for honest feedback, you need to act on it.
Tracking your employee net promoter score (NPS) is another great metric to see whether you’re building the kind of workplace your staff would recommend to others.
Celebrate success
It’s relatively easy to celebrate the small and large wins within an office environment. It can be harder to recreate those informal celebrations in a remote setting.
There are plenty of options to explore, including a short celebratory video you can share on LinkedIn, your website, and other channels.
Some companies let employees nominate each other for a specific benefit, or you could arrange for a small parcel of treats to be delivered to an employee of the month.
Choose something that suits your employees and their work style, and they will always appreciate it.
Adapting to a new era of work
The way we work has changed, probably for good. And for managers, that change brings new challenges.
With many employees still carving out a workspace within their homes, the boundaries between work and home stay blurred.
This “gray zone” can raise the risk of burnout. But there is huge potential for success when HR managers put deliberate strategies in place around the recruitment, hiring, and managing of remote employees.
How does your company help you maintain a good remote work-life balance? Let us know in the comments.
The post A Complete Guide to Promoting a Healthy Remote Work-Life Balance first appeared on Process Street | Compliance Operations Platform.
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