Keep “Work” and “Home” Separate When Working From Home

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There is plenty to love about working from home: time saved commuting, the possibility of wearing slippers to meetings, and access to one’s own refrigerator. However, the downside of being cozier when working is that work has more power to disrupt your coziness—the lines between work and home life can become uncomfortably blurry.

For those who work remotely, it may be welcome news that it is indeed possible to keep work and home lives separate. And according to new research published in The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, older workers are better at it than their younger colleagues. The authors of the two studies, published in May 2024, found that older age is associated with engaging in more practices that reinforce boundaries between work and personal domains. The research also suggests that holding boundaries between these two domains when teleworking is linked to greater productivity and better work-life balance.

Studying “boundary management tactics” across ages

Scheibe and colleagues conducted a series of two separate studies to understand the relationship between age, work boundary practices, and work outcomes. The first study involved surveying 172 workers from a range of industries, all living in English-speaking countries. The sample ranged in age from 20 to 69, and all worked from home at least 70 percent of the time. Participants were asked to rate their own use of boundary practices when working from home in several different categories: physical, behavioral, temporal, and communicative. Examples of behaviors that they were asked to rate include items such as “I avoid taking working materials away from my office space” (physical) and “I share my work calendar with team members, subordinates, and supervisors so they know when I am off work” (communicative).

In statistical analyses, the researchers controlled for the effects of gender, whether participants were living with children, supervisory status, experience with telework, demands at work and home, and boundary preferences. After conducting analyses, the researchers found that older teleworkers were more likely to use tactics that delineate boundaries between work and private lives. The use of these tactics, in turn, predicted greater productivity (defined as having fewer unfinished tasks at the end of the week).

The second study involved a completely new sample of 282 workers, all of whom worked remotely for at least 70 percent of the time. Participants ranged in age between 19 and 69, and all lived in English-speaking countries. A series of three surveys were administered to participants, with each survey spaced two weeks after the previous one. Participants were asked to rate their own use of boundary practices when working from home in all three survey waves, and they were asked to rate their work-life balance and unfinished tasks in the second and third survey waves. The results of Study 2 were similar to that of Study 1: Older workers were more likely to use boundary management tactics when working from home, and using these tactics predicted having fewer unfinished tasks at the end of the week. In Study 2, the use of boundary management tactics also temporally predicted a greater sense of work-life balance.

Across the two studies, the researchers found that the more frequently teleworkers used boundary management tactics, the fewer unfinished work tasks they reported in both studies, and the better they rated their work-life balance in Study 2. Older workers were more likely to use boundary management tactics and, therefore, were more likely to report fewer unfinished tasks and better work-life boundaries.

How to keep better boundaries while working from home

For those working from home or in hybrid positions, the study offers practical considerations for how to improve boundary management. Several examples of tactics are outlined below:

• Physical tactics: Using a dedicated workspace in the home; using separate devices (such as mobile phone, tablet, or laptop) for working and private activities
• Behavioral tactics: Avoiding checking work-related emails, messages, and/or calls during private time; avoiding giving out your private phone number to colleagues to discuss work-related matters
• Temporal tactics: Setting times in your calendar for when to start and when to finish work; using a recording system to record and monitor the amount of time spent working.
• Communicative tactics: Sharing your work calendar with team members, subordinates, and supervisors so they know when you are off work; communicating your preferences of how to handle emergencies during private time

Putting a combination of these boundary tactics into practice could help workers maintain the benefits of telework while promoting a sense of productivity and work-life balance.