The daily alarm that Katie Lipp sets was not meant to wake her up. It reminds you of going to bed.
The labor lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia, said she tried a range of techniques to set boundaries while working long days at home running her law firm during the pandemic. Few measures work as well as the 9:45 pm alarm she started setting last month, although she admits that she occasionally suspends him to send one last email.
“You never feel that what you’re doing is good enough, so you’re trapped in overwork,” said Lipp, the mother of a 5-year-old son. “Sleep is the difference. If I stay eight to nine hours, I can face the world. If I sleep six hours, it’s like an undead. “
A year after the start of the Covid-19 era, many can identify themselves. Employees say that the limits of professional life have blurred and then disappeared, when awakened life has come to mean “always on” at work. Experts warn that working 24 hours a day – while eating meals, helping with homework and spending a few moments with a partner – is not sustainable, and employers, from banking giant Citigroup Inc. to software company Pegasystems Inc ., are trying ways to ask the team to call back.
At giant consulting firm Accenture PLC, Jimmy Etheredge, the company’s CEO in North America, is embracing the notion of “returning lunch”, eating in peace away from the screens and recharging in the middle of each workday. The company is encouraging employees not to schedule internal meetings unrelated to the customer’s business on Fridays, and Mr. Etheredge has repeatedly told employees to be frank with managers, saying, “It’s okay not to be well.”