Guest blog: Could working from home be impacting the way you drink?

There are many benefits to working from home but with it can come additional stress points too, particularly for those who are social or need the structure and interactions of the office to perform at their best and enjoy their job.

Time can also weigh heavily on some people while WFH if it’s not managed correctly. For example, it’s much easier not to take sick days if stress is felt while working from home because you can paper over the cracks and don’t have to be always on to the same extent as when physically being present in the office.

A particular manifestation of the stresses of WFH can be drinking during working hours.¹ Compared to being in the office, people working from home can have a much more rigid schedule of interactions with colleagues, managers and customers – which is controlled by the Teams (or similar) calendar.

Those who might be vulnerable to problem drinking can fit alcohol around this schedule. It might seem to offer an immediate relief to the stresses or boredom of the day and the old commute time can become extra drinking or recovery time.

As someone who has had problems with alcohol already, I took the chance presented by WFH to drink more during working hours, and was able to cover it up to some extent - for example by necking copious amounts of black coffee before the next scheduled meeting. But it did have a significant detrimental effect on my performance. From my lived experience - and now as the head of a large department in an organisation where WFH over the greater part of the week is still the norm - I see the signs of the particular stresses it causes and the outcomes such as drinking.

How to recognise harmful drinking patterns when working from home

If you feel working from home might be changing your drinking at all, here are some examples from my own experience, which you might recognise:

• Repeatedly bringing meetings forward in the day or cancelling at very short notice.
• Communicating about taking a day’s holiday early in the morning of the same day. Also GP/ dentist/ vet appointments.
• Teams/ Zoom is set to ‘busy’ rather a lot, so the diary looks full for those trying to set up meetings with you.
• Huge swathes of time blocked out as ‘my time’ or ‘thinking time’. This is legitimised in many companies and some applications even automatically fill in free time with this.
• Lots of made-up technical issues – the home internet is often down or the laptop camera isn’t coming on during meetings.
• Recurring illnesses or injuries that periodically flare up.
• Numerous occurrences of family or pet illness requiring personal time to handle.
• Quietness in meetings when there should be a significant contribution.
• Displaying ‘booze induced courage’ as inhibitions wane, for example trying to be funny on calls or e-mails (otherwise known as b(ooze) mails), and inadvertently causing offence of one kind or another. Remember the adage – ‘b-mail in haste, repent at leisure!’ My faux pas (or should I say faux-pack pas) of this kind were legion.
• In online meetings searching for phrases and proffering incoherent arguments, semi-articulated which close off with ‘so… erm… you know... yeah!’ or similar.
• Following a doctrine of drink efficiency. This is the early day clearing of jobs that must be completed and which require higher brain functionality with clinical precision and extreme pace, to hasten the time to boozy treats with conscience clear. No comms forthcoming after this morning flurry for the rest of the day.
• God forbid – forgetting about evidence which is picked up by Teams or Zoom etc. I was caught out more than once with glasses, cans and bottles in the camera eye’s peripheral vision. Once, when I had forgotten to turn off the laptop’s camera on a Zoom call with the international team, a huge quaff from my pint glass was visible in four continents.
• Taking large alternate amounts of the diuretics lager and black coffee made colleagues often wonder why I had to keep excusing myself during teleconferences!

How Work From Home drinking affected me

These deceptions brought out by drinking while working from home created such terrible anxiety as the guilt increased and work piled up. You know colleagues are aware you’re underperforming and productivity inevitably reduces in a remorselessly downward spiral, as physical heath also suffers.

There were times during the brooding wee (wee wee?) hours in bed where I could barely raise myself from the swirling depths as the thoughts of work being compromised every-which-way tormented me.

So, what are some ways in which companies and managers can mitigate the conditions that may cause stress in colleagues working from home and increase efficiency to ‘office’ levels?

My tips for managers and colleagues

Based on my experience, I think there are some simple things that could help support colleagues and reduce WFH drinking:

• Ensure all team members have weekly one-to-ones, giving them the chance to download to their manager. Encourage managers to listen with a sympathetic ear – it’s also good practice to offer alternative support via someone other than the direct line manager.
• Set measurable time-framed objectives, linked to bonuses where possible, in exactly the same way as pre-covid days.
• Have recurring team meetings on Monday mornings. Set up the focus for the week and allow each team member to go through their objectives for it.
• Follow up meeting no-shows.
• Allow social online ‘coffee break’ events - say one a week. Leave it to the team members to set content – it’s their
• Don’t discount the ‘dog and bone’! Use the phone for ad-hoc calls – or Teams chat. Everything doesn’t have to be scheduled in the diary. Sometimes as a manager I want to know something right now. If a person consistently does not respond to these, the reasons must be explored.
• Progressively set up more team meetings in the office.
• Concentrate on problems within office hours. Don’t rain on the parade of office parties or leaving dos by discouraging them.
• Set up wellbeing and alcohol-related support signposting services that colleagues can self-refer to, if they are in need.
• For employees who have potentially alcohol-related performance issues that put them at risk of disciplinary actions, carry out carefully planned compassionate conversations while following your usual HR process.

There are various ways in which the individual affected can find help including support group organisations. I found self-help to be my effective route to improvement. I recognised that the bleak finality of hard stops for me had led to regular relapses.

I therefore responded to a plan that allowed my intake to progressively reduce in a safe controlled manner – using the project management tools of my profession to manage this. This approach allowed me the headroom to function efficiently at work whilst managing my intake downwards.

It’s very difficult for line managers to sensitively deal with colleagues who almost definitely have a problem with drinking, and specific support for them is required from the HR function. Drinkaware has an e-learning programme which can support workplace health and wellbeing programmes 

Drinkaware also has advice on how to offer help if you’re worried about how alcohol is affecting someone else – whether a colleague, friend or family member. 

Further information

• The benefits of drinking less
• Take a Drinking Check self-assessment
• Alcohol support services
• Contact the author

References

1) Nielsen, M. B., Christensen, J. O., & Knardahl, S. (2021). Working at home and alcohol use. Addictive behaviors reports, 14, 100377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.abrep.2021.100377