After a well-deserved vacation or relaxing staycation, it can be difficult to return to work. Your emails have piled up in your inbox, each one demanding your immediate attention. Your colleagues needed answers two days ago. What’s more, your boss already has a long list of tasks waiting for you. And all this happens while your brain struggles to transfer out of vacation mode. Don’t worry, the post holiday blues can be cured!
More than a decade ago, open floor plans were heralded as the future of workplace design. The drab walls and cubicles that conjured images from the movie Office Space were no longer the norm. By then, companies could look and feel like hip, young startups with open space plans and team members sitting right next to each other.
The Coronavirus pandemic has in a very short period of time profoundly impacted our lives, changing the very way we live, work, and socialize. These days, many employees are trying to adjust to working from home – sometimes without a proper workspace available – and being productive in the midst of it all can be a real challenge. However, of all the challenges that come with this transition, setting up an accommodating home office is one of the easiest to fix.
Vacation is that time of the year when you finally relax and disconnect from daily stress. And most people can’t wait for it! However, some can’t really afford it either due to a lack of money or time. While workers in Europe are entitled to up to 30 days of paid vacation time every year, in the U.S. companies are totally free to choose whether they want to give their workforce any paid vacation at all.
Look around at any airport and you’ll see people surrounding outlets, sitting on their laptops and phones. According to the State of the Remote Job Marketplace report, 43 percent of the workforce works remotely at least some of the time. A major perk of distributed work is the ability to be traveling while on the clock.
Americans could use a vacation and unplugging from the digital world. Recent data shows that an estimated 53 percent of Americans continue to work over the weekend, 52 percent outside of designated office hours, and 54 percent still work even if they call in sick, according to Deloitte.
Most adults spend up to 11 hours per day digitally connected one way or another. We use screens for work, for fun, for shopping – basically our entire lives revolve around a screen. While some people don’t see that as a problem, 1 in 5 people have taken a digital detox, and 7 in 10 people are trying to limit their screen time.
If there was an award for the most loathed day of the week, Monday would definitely win the grand prize. It is the day closest and at the same time furthest away from the weekend. On Monday, professional life starts again after a small break that allowed you to experience freedom. It is the beginning of another five days of work and all the stress associated with that.
Research at Stanford University found that those collaborating on a certain assignment will tend to persist with the task 64 percent longer than solo workers. This outcome, the study suggests, also leads to more enthusiasm, commitment and intrinsic motivation. And all of these have a notable impact on the success of the organization.
The purpose of collaboration is to unite a group of people to complete a common objective or goal, in addition to sharing the workload. As such, collaboration is beneficial for employees and managers alike. Learn more about why your team should be collaborating more often and how you can harness these benefits in order to be more productive.
We all have moments, or even days, when we find focusing on work more difficult than usual. Sometimes the reasons are obvious, but other times we are stuck wondering what we are doing wrong and what’s happening to us. In this article we are going to explore these less recognizable factors that impair our ability to concentrate and properly accomplish our tasks.
