During the pandemic, around one third of all jobs in the UK, mostly in the service sector, became remote. The change in working environment was a massive shift for many people. Researchers Guillaume Gueguen and Cladia Senik, from the Sorbonne University in Paris, have looked at the impact this change had on the mental health of workers by using data from Understanding Society.
They found that full-time working from home (WFH) during the pandemic worsened mental health for the majority. Part-time WFH however did show some positive effects on life satisfaction. The study also uncovered a pronounced fall in wellbeing of women with children within the first months of the pandemic, which is thought to be associated with home-schooling.
The Covid pandemic caused a large jump in a trend towards flexible working that was already happening. Working from home allowed many to carry on with their jobs at home during the lockdowns where we were told to stay inside. For some this transition was easy, as technology such as Zoom made it easy to communicate with fellow employees, and more people were introducing office spaces into their home to create a separate work environment.
However, for some, this meant struggling to balance their home and work life as they were now interlinked. Despite these issues, working from home is now a large part of people’s lives, and for many it hasn’t stopped post-pandemic.
Whether WFH will stay popular may depend on the longer-term impact on productivity in the workplace. This research shows the value of this arrangement from the workers’ perspective and their overall wellbeing. The results found that on average, working from home entirely during the pandemic had a detrimental effect on mental health, in particular on concentration, self-confidence and feelings of usefulness.
However, the study did find an evolution in people’s wellbeing when working from home and the researchers suggest to possible interpretations of this. Firstly, people may have struggled with WFH in the beginning due to demotivation and concentration issues, but over time, they adjusted to this new working arrangement, both mentally and by acquiring necessary equipment and logistics. This adaptation may explain the improvement in wellbeing observed in individuals who remain in full-time WFH for consecutive months. Secondly, some people might have been initially forced into WFH by lockdowns, but later had the choice to continue. The rebound in wellbeing may be driven by those who find WFH beneficial.
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