Working From Home – How To Stay Motivated

As a flexible way for employees to carry out duties, working from home has become a staple work offering within the modern workplace and has seen a significant shift in application across businesses worldwide.

• Split across home, remote, and hybrid working, from September 2022 to January 2023, 44% of workers reported home or hybrid working and 56% reported travelling to work in the last 7 days.

Spearheaded by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and paired with the increased availability of video and instant messaging platforms such as Slack (incorporated in over 100,000 organisations as of 2022), working from home continues to offer an alternative to face-to-face interactions within a working environment and minimises any time constraints of traditional employee commutes.

It is important to consider the impact of working outside of the office space and how this can affect employee workload, productivity and above all else, motivation.

This article will explore simple practices that you can integrate into your life to improve motivation when working remotely or hybrid.

Best Ways of Improving Your Motivation During Hybrid and Remote Working

Creating a Personal & Productive Space

When working from home, it is important to consider the environment around you as you would with an office environment. There can be many aspects of a space that can encourage positive relations with motivation when working including:

A Clear & Tidy Space

• Ensuring your working space is well-kept and clean can improve focus on work in front of you – such as concentrating on a laptop or desktop screen. Having a cluttered working area can provide visual distractions that can become irritants and can convey frustrations when focus is a priority.

A Comfortable Work Environment

• When you’re working within a specific space for a prolonged period, you want to ensure you’re contented. Much like an office space, investing in a comfortable seating arrangement can avoid antagonistic behaviours within the working week.

If Possible, a Separate Room Dedicated to Work

• Having a dedicated space for work can be a great way of providing a separation of work and home within a home environment. This can provide a clear distinction between where you should be working, and where you can conduct your leisure time. Ensuring this room is easily accessible is also beneficial for introducing breaks throughout your working day/week.

Scheduling Your Time at Home

Time can be an important factor that impacts working practices throughout the week. Ensuring that your workplace schedule is reflective of your working-from-home schedule can maintain consistency across your working week and minimise disconnect from in-person and home working. However, due to the mitigated impact of commuting, working from home does offer advantages to your schedule that can be used for extracurricular activities/jobs that would otherwise be impacted by commuter time. Some examples are:

• Domestic home activities
• Food preparations
• Going to the gym
• Playing sports
• Walking a pet
• Catching up on eating and sleeping

Using available time to incorporate activities that would otherwise be affected by in-person working can further enrich an employee’s day-to-day, allowing for a more healthy work-life balance.

Wearing Work-Specific Clothing

A controversial recommendation, maintaining a work-home wear separation can also be important in employee motivation when working from home. Although an advantage of working from home can include more casual and relaxed work attire, depending on the industry, being present in work-specific attire can further enhance the separation of home and working life. Work-specific clothing can also provide corporate consistency across hybrid working, further minimising the impact of detached work and home working practices.

Interacting with Colleagues

As is the same with face-to-face interactions, socialising and interacting with colleagues throughout your working day is a natural part of the working environment. Translating this across to working from home can help promote collaboration between teams and provide much-needed work-focused breaks. Consistent colleague interactions can:

• Improve workplace relationships
• Evoke a sense of belonging
• Increase engagement and loyalty

These all feed into key motivational and job-satisfaction techniques as identified in Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Give Yourself Breaks

Work-life separation is key to improving employee performance and incorporating breaks throughout your working day can be beneficial for motivation factors for several reasons.

Without breaks throughout a working day, the body can become depleted, exhausted, and ultimately stressed out due to the ranging levels of physical and psychological resources that are used for work. To maximise performance and motivation, employees need time to recharge their “working brain”. As a UK government standard, an employee is entitled to an uninterrupted 20 minutes of rest during a working day of more than 6 hours – such as dinner and lunch.

Breaks can be categorised into different types with their varied benefits and finding a break type that suits the demands of remote or hybrid working can be down to personal preference:

Time-orientated break

• Depending on your lifestyle, a shorter or longer break can be more beneficial for the working week. Shorter breaks can be beneficial for times when thought is needed about a working task, whereas longer breaks can favour a more disconnected approach to improve work-life balance.

Location-oriented break

• The location of a break can be important when considering rest. This can improve removing yourself from your working space entirely, whether this be moving to a nearby sofa, walking, or even performing an activity. A different location for a break can encourage more independent and less work-orientated thought.

Activity-orientated break

• Much like a location-focused break, conducting an activity within a break period can be a great way or recharge mental “batteries” before resuming work. This plays to the dissociation of working from home and home life and can include simply going for a walk on a lunch break.

Reward Yourself

Motivational rewards can be a very simple factor for deploying an incentive for an employee within their working week.

Rewards can factor directly into the advantages of a working-from-home environment, such as:

• Watching a particular show when you finish working
• Going for a specific walk you’ve been looking forward to
• Making the most of the additional time and catching up on domestic admin
• Going out for a leisure activity earlier than usual

Having small and big rewards throughout a working week can drive motivation as they incentivise an employee to complete a task to the best of their ability to get towards their reward goal. Due to the isolating environment that working from home can encompass, work-specific rewards can also factor in for motivation due to limited distractions including:

• Focusing on a task that requires specific attention to details
• Conducting a successful meeting
• Assisting a colleague with a 1:1 scenario

Summary

By following just a few of the steps highlighted in this article, you can start to improve your motivation whilst working from home, whether this be during your fully remote or hybrid working schedule. Each practice can be situational-specific, however, being aware of how these practices are impacting other employees can also be beneficial to consider for managerial positions in modern working environments. Key takeaways to stay motivated when working from home include:

• Creating a Personal & Productive Space
• Scheduling Your Time at Home
• Interact with Colleagues
• Give Yourself Breaks
• Reward Yourself