Kristin, you bring up some great points in this article, especially around how important it is to try to understand someone before jumping to judgments.

Before the pandemic, my company was already operating on a 60% remote work schedule, so we’d only be in the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Because of that, moving to full remote work wasn’t as much of a shift for me as it has been for others. I take your point about how video work meetings can let coworkers into your personal world for awhile, but I think the opposite can also be true: with coworkers staring out from your screen and into your home, there’s a new expectation to make your personal space more professional. As a result, instead of feeling like work can be a more open place, some may feel that their homes have now become depersonalized work spaces.

Allowing the personal to bleed into the professional can be beneficial and easy for some, but for others, they may feel forced to involuntarily let the professional invade their personal lives.

Thanks very much for your insights!