Managing FOMO While Working Remotely

Working remotely can create moments of anxiety, especially with IT tech. Here is how to best manage FOMO anxiety among business teams.

Remote work can often create new challenges in communication that Is difficult to envision

So many professionals across the US have adopted WFH — work from home — as a response to the pandemic. But working remotely has opened the potential for the social media trend Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) to take place in a business environment. IT teams can play a vital role to manage FOMO and keep organizations moving while adapting to this isolating way of working.

To get a handle on how this phenomenon occurs let’s look at how FOMO is defined and experienced. FOMO is an anxious feeling of being left out of other people’s lives. It occurs while viewing social media commentary and posts from other people. Studies and discussions have linked FOMO to a self-feeding pattern in social media usage. People want to connect to other people’s thoughts and feelings through Facebook post, TikTok videos, and Tweets. Instead, social media profiles can inadvertently display posts that invoke comparisons and depressed feelings over one’s perceived failure to live up to the lifestyle implied.

FOMO while working can be particularly hard to detect. In a given office, people generally keep a professional demeanor, which…