More than seven months into widespread remote work, technologists at some of the nation’s largest companies are having problems separating their professional and personal lives, according to a new breakdown by Blind, which anonymously surveys technologists about a variety of issues.
Some 72 percent of technologists at Google said they weren’t able to effectively separate work from home life, the same percentage as technologists at Microsoft. Meanwhile, 71 percent of Apple technologists said they were having the same issue. Here’s the breakdown at other major tech firms:
Issues with work-life balance aside, what do technologists continue to like about working from their home office or other remote location? Overall, more than half (55 percent) of respondents said that flexibility was the biggest benefit of working from home, followed by the 37 percent who cited increased freedom to live and work from anywhere. Here’s the breakdown:
In other words, remote and flexible work seems to offer a lot of benefits—provided companies take care to watch employees’ burnout and work levels. And that’s problematic: This summer, Dice’s COVID-19 Sentiment Survey found that roughly one-third of technologists who work from home are dealing with a significantly increased workload. Meanwhile, fears over job security and the state of the world are also weighing on technologists, according to another recent survey by Blind.
Although companies such as Google and Microsoft have increasingly leaned toward embracing flexible and remote work for all employees (especially after some early resistance to the idea on the part of some CEOs), that’s only part of the battle—it’s up to managers and team leaders to ensure that everyone is achieving proper work-life balance, especially given the increased workloads faced by many technologists. Communication is key to ensuring that valuable technologists don’t burn out, and that they take sufficient time throughout the week to “unplug” and handle their personal affairs.