A hand is holding up a gold set of scales against a blue sky, symbolising work-life balance.
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Achieving work-life balance as a remote worker

2 Apr 2021

Working from home during a pandemic can make it harder to reach the right work-life balance. Here’s some news and advice that could help.

Staying productive and honing your communication skills are important for successful remote working, but we got some great reminders about another crucial aspect this week that you need to keep in mind – work-life balance. Getting this right is difficult on the best of days, but working from home during a pandemic only makes it harder.

So, we asked some of the people in our community to share the biggest lessons they have learned in the past year of working from home. Kemp’s Deirdre Sarsfield, for example, emphasised the importance of measuring your day based on what you achieve rather than how many hours you’ve put in, and to put the laptop away as soon as you’re done.

Citi’s Donal McCarthy, meanwhile, said he was making time for rituals like coffee chats. And Workhuman’s Conor Mahony highlighted how much it can mean when leaders encourage their teams to invest in their personal time as well as their work.

If you’re a team leader planning for a remote or hybrid future, Hays’ Nick Deligiannis gave us five things to consider.

They include really thinking about how many remote staff members you can support at one time, the ways your employees will be able to socialise and stay connected, and whether or not you should use video calls on a regular basis.

The Government also made strides towards greater worker wellbeing this week. It signed a code of practice that officially gives workers the right to disconnect and switch off from their duties outside normal working hours.

It also announced significant investment plans for rural Ireland, which it hopes will help more people work remotely outside cities. To make that happen, it has promised a number of rejuvenation projects for rural regions that could help those who decide to move manage their work-life balance.

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Lisa Ardill
By Lisa Ardill

Lisa Ardill joined Silicon Republic as senior careers reporter in July 2019. She has a BA in neuroscience and a master’s degree in science communication. She is also a semi-published poet and a big fan of doggos. Lisa briefly served as Careers Editor at Silicon Republic before leaving the company in June 2021.

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