Almost six months into working from home during a global pandemic, employees may be starting to feel burnout – despite very rarely stepping out, or engaging in heavy physical exercise.
Working from home often leads to work hours merging into personal hours, and you’re almost always constantly available for calls – and it’s mostly your office ‘designated’ lunch hour merges with the same time most work calls are scheduled.
For some, the designated work hours have also been stretched – to more days, and more hours, without the addition of pay. The blurring between work and personal life has led to more tiresome, sleepless nights – more people are witnessing burnout than ever before.
Google, however, is aiming to change that. The company is giving employees another day off to avoid burnout as the Covid-19 pandemic forces people to continue working from home.
Marking the Friday day-off as a one-time paid holiday for “collective wellbeing” that applies to both full-time employees as well as interns. The company’s move was revealed according to documents viewed by CNBC.
“We strongly encourage you to take this day off — and managers should actively support their team to reprioritize work commitments in order to do so,” an internal forum for employees allegedly said, reports CNBC.
However, it does leave room for people who need the day to work – open, giving them an alternate day to take off.
“If your manager identifies an urgent business-critical need that requires you to work at the last minute, you should take the next available working day off instead.” Earlier in the initial months of the pandemic, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai had also called for a day off.
Since not all Google teams will be able to take a day off, including support and teams responding to customer needs, those groups will ‘explore something similar,’ to ensure they too, get the time-out.
As news of Google’s Friday off circulated, employees of other companies, also wanted in, mentioning that a collective day for mental health and ‘a break’ is very important.
Dear every company,
Take notes.https://t.co/lvOEnwiD1x
— Alexis D. Rodriguez (@alexisdyan2) September 4, 2020
Google is giving employees another day off to avoid burnout as the Covid-19 Pandemic enters its seventh month.
The company is marking Friday as a one-time paid holiday for “collective wellbeing” that applies to full-time employees and interns – WOW
Have you been given a day off?— Miss M? (@MissWanyeri) September 4, 2020
Google tells employees to take Friday off as a 'collective wellbeing' holiday during pandemic https://t.co/OfBFUZqgFr
— CNBC (@CNBC) September 3, 2020
Every business should be doing this every Friday…foreverhttps://t.co/UzvA9Dpbij
— John Andrew Grillo (@IronJohnGrillo) September 4, 2020
If only every other company was like Google!
While the future of work from home seems indefinite, coronavirus fatigue is a very real thing.
Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the world may very soon be facing a mental health crisis – nothing like we’ve ever seen before. And “coronavirus fatigue”, a very real, very worrisome fallout of the pandemic is manifesting itself in thousands of hapless individuals around the world.
