The enforced office closures of the Covid pandemic are long gone, but the legacy of the lockdown lives on as many employers continue to opt for hybrid systems in which staff spend at least a couple of days a week working from home.
Often portrayed as a best-of-both-worlds scenario, including by workers, the reality of hybrid work is more one of unacknowledged isolation as well as reduced productivity, going by a study of 13 years of survey data for half a million people.
For professions requiring significant time ploughing a lonely furrow in front of a screen, employers could consider intervening to make sure staff are not left in solitude, say the authors of the study, published in the journal Science on Thursday.
“Both individuals and organizations may want to prioritize making remote work less isolating by, for example, coordinating in-office days for hybrid workers or encouraging informal interaction, even online,” the team suggested, adding that staff can make lifestyle changes such as broadening their social circle outside work.
Based at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard University and University of Virginia, the team assessed data for people in jobs prone to remote work, such as software engineering and marketing, and jobs where off-site is less practicable, such as nursing and mechanical engineering.
“Workers in jobs amenable to remote work experienced substantially larger post-pandemic increases in time spent alone, worsened mental well-being across multiple measures, and increases in the use of mental health services and prescriptions,” the team found, pointing out a marked contrast with employees whose work requires them to be on the job and out and about among people.
And even though other surveys have shown hybrid working remains popular and even adds to productivity, the researchers believe that adherents have not weighed up the potential impact on their own mental health of working alone, warning that the worst of the effects could “take time to accumulate.”
Companies and regulators should take mental health concerns into account when setting remote work policies and rules, the team said.
