Seeking a balance between personal and professional life generates several uncomfortable situations for people who must return to face-to-face work.
Last summer, Julio Carmona began the process of shedding a fully remote work schedule by showing up at the office once a week.
The new hybrid schedule at her job at a real estate agency in Stratford, Connecticut, allowed her to continue spending time cooking dinner for her family and taking her teenage daughter to basketball.
But in the coming months, he faces the prospect of more mandatory days at the office. And that’s creating stress for the father of three.
Carmona, 37, whose father died of Covid-19 last year, is worried regarding contracting the virus, but she also has more to worry regarding: rising food and gas costs, childcare expenses for her newborn baby and her struggle to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
“Working from home has been a lot less stressful when it comes to work-life balance,” said Carmona, who works in finance at the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.
“You are more productive because there are far fewer distractions.”
As more businesses order back-to-the-office orders, workers must readjust to pre-pandemic rituals like long commutes, juggling child care and physical interaction with co-workers.
But these routines have become more difficult two years later. Spending more time with colleagues might increase exposure to the coronavirus, for example, while inflation has increased the costs of meals and commuting.
Among workers who were remote and have returned at least one day a week in person, more say things have generally gotten better than worse and that they have been more productive, according to an April survey from the Norc Center for Public Affairs Research and The Associated Press. But the stress level of these workers is high.
Overall, among employed adults, the survey shows that 16% say they work remotely, 13% work both remotely and in person, and 72% say they only work in person.
41% of workers who have returned to the office said the amount of stress they experience has worsened; 22% said it has improved and 37% said it has not changed.
The AP-Norc survey of 1,085 adults was conducted April 14-18 using a sample drawn from Norc’s AmeriSpeak Panel, representative of the US population.
The margin of error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
That informationInstantly on your cell phone. Join the Diario Primicia group on WhatsApp through the following link:https://chat.whatsapp.com/IV62KtH0GkpHrkOqoqly4o
We are also on Telegram as @DiarioPrimicia, join us here:https://t.me/diarioprimicia
