What happens at home stays at home!
By Yasin Rofcanin and Smriti Anand
COVID-19 has shifted the paradigms of reality for everyone. For many employees and organizations alike, working from home has become the new “normal” whereby work and home boundaries have become blurred. In addition to handling all the anxiety provoked by the pandemic, employees have to constantly juggle work and home demands in the hope of achieving an optimum work-family balance. Under these circumstances, anyone occupying a managerial position faces the challenge of virtually communicating with their employees on a constant basis, as overnight the “small talks and hangouts” that held the workplace together have disappeared. It is critical for managers to stay attuned to the specific needs and circumstances of employees and offer their best “personalised” help in tackling work-family issues. Based on our research and to complement our new virtual issue at Human Relations, here are five tips for managers and HR practitioners at this fraught time:
1. Be physically and emotionally visible
As a manager, it is crucial that you offer individualized emotional support and frequent check-ins to make sure members of your team are dealing well with this unprecedented situation. Younger or newer employees who are still trying to figure out the workplace particularly need this support. Research suggests that emotional support of supervisors is a key element in facilitating employee adaptation to flexible working (Kelly et al., 2020). Expressing care and concern for employees to deal with work-family problems may be particularly salient for female employees, who tend to disproportionately bear the burden of family responsibilities.
2. Put yourself in the shoes of your employees
Prepare yourself for the changing expectations and widely varying preferences of employees. Bearing with new family responsibilities such as home schooling one’s children and care-giving to ailing or elderly family members, employees may find it challenging to keep motivated and productive during these times (Las Heras et al., 2017). Demonstrating empathy and perspective taking are two managerial skills identified by research as key to encouraging employee productivity and work performance (Vidyarthi et al., 2014).
3. Nurture an intimate-professional relationship
A decade of research has shown that employees negotiate individualized work arrangements (i.e., i-deals) with their managers to address their unique needs, goals, and preferences. With the overhaul of work conditions worldwide, these deals have become more prevalent; but, caution is needed to ensure fairness in their implementation. Latest research revealed two inter-related factors: Firstly, developing and nurturing a mutually supportive and trust-based relationship between an employee and a manager (i.e., a high-quality leader-member exchange) ensures that the benefits of i-deals are obvious in enhanced work performance (Anand et al., 2018). Secondly, it is imperative to ensure rules and policies are transparent and clearly communicated to everyone (Marescaux et al., 2019).
4. Be a role model in work-family management
Scholars caution that work-from-home may create the expectation of being available all the time (Cañibano, 2018), and lead to employee perceptions of intensified work (Kelliher and Anderson, 2009). Employees observe and learn from their peers and supervisors. In an environment where the possibilities of social learning are limited, managers need to set a role model to deliver cues for effective work-family management for the subordinates. Indeed, in a recent study, we were able to demonstrate that, how supervisors manage work-family boundaries and their creative ways of reducing stress related to conflicts, trickled down to their subordinates, positively shaping their work and family lives (Stollberger et al., 2019).
5. Develop a culture of “switching-off”
When working from home, it is very easy to lose track of time. However, this situation triggers burnout and exhaustion, deterring work motivation and productivity (Stollberger et al., 2019). Research on boundary theory argues that individuals differ in the extent to which they prefer integration of work-family lives versus a complete segmentation. Integrators are better at tackling work stress at home, while segmentors prefer to keep their weekends isolated from work related issues. A take away is to know “what your boundary management style” is (Derks et al., 2016).
COVID-19 crisis will definitely have a toll both in the short and long term on how we work and succeed in our working lives, either in office or through our computer screens. What still matters, and will become more important than ever before is the “human touch” of leaders, who need to develop a sense of empathy, perspective taking and understanding of the specialized work needs and preferences of their subordinates. In a team characterized by openness, trust and fair policies, employees will be encouraged to strike i-deals to manage work-family boundaries successfully without the fear of resentment from their peers.
About the authors
