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Impacts of working from home on mental health tracked in study of Australians
- nicbou 10mo agotl;dr: positive impact Is there anyone having a worse experience working from home? I'm curious to hear some stories.
- brailsafe 10mo agoIt varies, working from home can be a horrible isolating trap and simultaneously much more productive and appealing. Especially in the winter months, if your work day is now at your home with no intrinsic reason to go anywhere else, you wake up in darkness and first leave the house in darkness, meanwhile the agency you'd otherwise have is impeded by people watching your Slack status wondering where you are, it's not exactly ideal. With no physical difference between work and home, you and up basically always being at home, which can be dreadful at times.
- mgarfias 10mo agosome of us like that. I get 90% of my social interaction needs from my wife/kids/dogs. The rest I get from going to the gym and lifting. OTOH: i also live in the woods.
- brailsafe 10mo agoDo they like that? Either way, that's perfectly fine, it's not for me, but I wasn't arguing against it. I'm quite happy in the city near the mountains, I wouldn't even entertain moving 3 blocks deeper into the suburbs. The Gym is an underappreciated social space.
- mgarfias 10mo agoWhy yes, they do. If they didn't, they would get out and socialize. I'm not controlling them. We're basically all introverts here. Except maybe my youngest, who gets his social needs met at school, and he's free to visit them whenever he wants (within reason).
- wiseowise 10mo ago> by people watching your Slack status wondering where you are Find a better workplace, Jesus.
- phantasmish 10mo agoI’m not sure how leaving home before sunrise then arriving home after sunset, to go spend all your daylight hours in an office, is any better. At least every room in my house has ample natural light…
- komali2 10mo agoI think just the smallest interaction with other humans on a day to day basis is pretty important for our happiness, even for introverts.
- defrost 10mo agoHybrid: All the focus of at home work coupled with a few days talking smack around the office cooler . . . "The most important finding of the study is that of hybrid work," Jan Kabatek, a researcher at the University of Melbourne and co-author of the study, told the ABC. "The biggest gains for women were found for work from home arrangements, which involved the majority of days spent at home, but retaining at least one or two days of work from the office or on-site.
- brailsafe 10mo agoThat's not great 100% of the time either, but a mix is what I've found to be a bit better for mental health. > At least every room in my house has ample natural light… Must be nice, I live in a basement. A place where every room, presumably more than one of them, has ample natural light, costs a minimum of a million dollars, but I still prefer my city to one who's only value proposition is ample sunlight and cheap houses.
- AuthAuth 10mo agoMy life falls apart when I do not have the routine of getting up and going to work and talking to people. But I enjoy working from home because I feel like I can do less work (even during work hours) and more things I enjoy.
- mierz00 10mo agoI don’t do well with 100% working from home. My preference is 3 days in the office, I find anything less than that and I struggle mentally. My home starts to feel like a prison and I lose connection with people. I really value human connection and I just don’t get the same thing online.
- lumost 10mo agoWhy not use a co-working space? I found it was the best of all worlds when your "coworkers" have no relationship with your "boss".
- danpalmer 10mo agoNot the previous commenter, but co-working spaces are few and far between in most of the world, plus they can be expensive if the employee is the one paying. As for the coworkers not knowing your boss thing, I agree, although in a more positive framing – it can be helpful to have a work social group that isn't in your reporting chain. You can get this at many medium sized and up companies.
- wiseowise 10mo agoOr better yet, a therapist. Work is literally THE worst place to make human connections because it is a business first and foremost (yes, go ahead and post how it’s not true – it won’t change a thing).
- komali2 10mo ago> Work is literally THE worst place to make human connections I don't necessarily disagree, but I make a slightly different argument, in that, humans will make human connections, whether they like it or not, and the most typical human experience is to make stronger and stronger connections with people you see regularly. Furthermore, depending on the company, there's the desire to be a part of something bigger, there's social conditioning setting in to prove yourself among your peers, there's the desire to not appear like you're lazy. Where I think you'll agree is that your company will 100% exploit these human aspects of you to get a better margin on the value of your labor vs the compensation they pay you.
- anotherevan 10mo ago> tl;dr: positive impact I think you're being a bit reductive there. For one, the article indicates the greatest benefits are from a hybrid environments where some time is spent in the office.
- knallfrosch 10mo agoWhen I moved, I gave up a 7km (4 miles) bike commute along a river and switched to WFH. Definitely missed that. I also feel disconnected from work when WFH, like I don't care about the company at all. The obvious problem is that it made me think the time spent working was quite a waste. I didn't take as many and as socialable breaks. When I was unproductive, I felt internal psychological pressure to work longer. Now in-office, I clock my hours and am free.
- mattbettinson 10mo agoI used to hate remote, especially being single. But then I started absolutely JAM packing my evenings with dates, run clubs, time left dinners, harassing friends to get drinks with me, playing magic the gathering commander (4 player), music lessons, etc. it has been way better but I do think a day or two in office a week would be amazing for me
- technion 10mo agoTheres also the physical health. I can only get to a doctor easily because when wfh, I can do it in my lunch time. I remember when I would weigh up requesting annual leave vs not going at all.
- andyferris 10mo agoI was physically a lot healthier prior to WFH because I was way more active. Interesting trade off.
- vladvasiliu 10mo agoIn my case, I'm way more active while WFH because I go for a run during lunch, lift weights instead of waiting around for a train. Commuting is mostly dead time for me (and I'm fortunate enough to not have that long a commute).
- mrmincent 10mo agoI’ve been 100% remote since the Melbourne pandemic shutdowns, and I’ve absolutely loved it for the most part, and hope to be able to continue to work mostly remote going forward. It definitely has its downsides though, I’ve missed a lot of the incidental chats and socialising, throwing ideas around etc, and it can be a bit mentally draining. I’ve started renting a hot desk at a wework in the city once a month just to be around people and feel part of something bigger. I actually feel less tired after schlepping into the city and back that day than I do on most other days, which is surprising.
- y-curious 10mo agoI mostly worry about the effects on career progression. I’ve been WFH for 6 years and I feel like I am missing out on making weak social connections as a result. That said, it’s really lovely overall. I have a kid on the way and it’s hard to imagine RTO now.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoI got minorly pressured to go into the office for my current job when hired, which was silly - in over three years I've never professionally interfaced with anyone outside of my one teammate. I agreed to go in 2 days/week, and I'm glad I did; it gives me some healthy facetime with other Homo sapiens. In winter, with Amazon Prime and Doordash, I can basically exist without seeing people at all. Not good for me!
- satisfice 10mo agoDoes it also work for people not on the Australian spectrum?
- Aeglaecia 10mo agowhile i do fully expect your comment to get downvoted it is pretty funny and a great question when considering that australian society is probably not a relevant sample space to generalize against
- ggm 10mo agoWhy not? 40% migrant, of direct or 2nd generation <other culture> and so massive amounts of cross-spread into different world experience and outlook. It's a giant melting pot (and not only because if you leave the pot outside, it melts)
- Aeglaecia 10mo agofor that particular statistic to be relevant you would have to cross correlate against recent immigrants to australia and whether or not working from home is relevant to their places of employment , then you'd have to start factoring in a culture where laziness is valorized (in stark contrast to the work to death ethic presenting in say japan or america) , and at some point it should probably considered that australia has a world class social safety net ... on a personal basis it does seem likely that a similar outcome would occur globally , because the outcome was literally nothing ("no notable change among people who were not already dealing with mental health concerns") ... just trying to make the point that social science is extremely blind to confounding variables
- ikr678 10mo agoCurious what parts of the average Australian WFH experience would not be able to be generalised to say the US or European worker (in a similar WFH compatible role?). The only thing I can think of is our poor (by international standards) home internet speeds.
- IAmBroom 10mo ago
- RatchetWerks 10mo agoI might be in the minority. But I actually like working at an office (or preferably hybrid). At work, I work. At home, I do home things. When I work and home at the same place i find it very hard to switch into either mode. This effect is greatly magnified when you have kids. I worked remote for a bit , and my overall happiness levels increased when I started working at co-working space. Granted my commute is less than 15 min. My gym schedule has improved since it’s on the way to the coworking space. I think the best setup is hybrid IMO
- komali2 10mo agoI've met some people like this and my theory, based as well on my own experience of how to get me to actually do things, is that humans are hugely dependent on externalizing (or, structures) to get things done. So when working from home, the best way to enable actual work getting done is to have a work room that's dedicated to doing work in, and nothing else. No kid's toys allowed in there, no kids allowed in there, no videogames installed on the PC in there, and so on. This was what it took for me to achieve what I believe to be my maximum focus. I have issues getting to the gym as well, and you describe the externalization that made it easy for me to get to the gym every day as well. For me it wasn't about having the gym on the way to something, but rather having every aspect of my environment upon waking up keyed to the goal of getting me out of the house and into the gym. So my gym clothes are underneath my feet when I swing my legs out of bed, so I just chuck them on out of habit. My gym shoes are visible from the bathroom near the door so I can't help but see them when I go in to brush my teeth and then come out after. My gym card is out and visible as well. I've learned my brain is too squishy to be depended upon, but when I leverage externalization and make the universe be my brain for me, I can get stuff done I never thought I'd be able to do. Sometimes the easiest way to do that is to get a job that provides a lot of structure for you, but my hope is that that isn't truly necessary for everyone, because having the ability to set your own workspace is hugely freeing and something I think everyone should have the right to do. I had an advantage in the big push to WFH because I have really bad ADHD and already knew I couldn't trust my brain, and had already read a bunch of books on ADHD and focus and motivation, and so had the strategies ready to go. I feel like if people who prefer office environments, specifically for the reason that they focus better there, had these same strategies, they might be able to find their home office (or a coworking space or library) just as effective as their work office.
- shahbaby 10mo agoI think people should get paid for the time they spend commuting too and from work. Companies would change their tune on WFH real quick if that were the case.
- Rebelgecko 10mo agoI don't think we should incentivize people to have longer commutes
- kelseyfrog 10mo agoI don't think people should be doing unpaid labor. What's the win-win?
- kaashif 10mo agoSalaried employees are already paid for their labour, I'm not paid hour by hour. If I work one extra hour, was that unpaid and my employer stealing from me? If I work one hour less, is that me stealing from my employer? No on both counts in my opinion. When picking a job I consider a commute a cost already and would need to be compensated for it in the form of higher pay. But I don't think we should artificially stack the deck in favour of people who live close to work, that just adds a totally fake and unneeded item to the long list of advantages e.g. non parents have over parents who need a bigger house or access to schools.
- xboxnolifes 10mo agoAgreed, which is why all salaried positions allow you to leave work at any time, as long as your work is done for the day.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoHeh, "all". Fun fact: you don't know "all".
- rswail 10mo agoI've been "work from home" since 2012, mainly because the projects I worked on were actually in overseas cities. Before COVID, I would go on work trips of 1-2 weeks every 2 months or so, which was more than enough "office time" to get my doses of office chatter, noisy work environments, stupid in-person meetings etc. Even before the lockdowns (Melbourne had the longest in the world), I made it part of my routine to go outside every day to get coffee/lunch/sit-in-the-park/walk/talk to people. It's important to have that human contact, but it's better that I get to choose who to have that contact with and when and how. There are numerous friends from my work that I also see out of work, but there are a great majority that I have no interest in being with in person or outside the work context.
- 56J8XhH7voFRwPR 10mo agoI feel this is the perfect mix. Aside from a short stint at a company that didnt believe in allowing employees to work remotely in 2020 (don't ask), I have been fully remote since 2019. I love being remote, love being able to take my son to school and pick him up, etc. I do, however, cherish the two times a year I travel into the corporate office and work in person with my teammates. I wish I had the option to go into the office, not required, just a choice.
- bjourne 10mo agoStanding on a crowded subway train, hearing people coughing and sniveling around you, infecting you with their diseases, costing you sick days... All because everyone has to work in the office 9 to 17 or else bosses don't think you work. It's so stupid shit.
- swah 10mo agoI do miss all of those things (at times) and at some point visited a shopping mall and became very happy to see hundreds of humans happily walking around. It felt almost spiritual... could not replicate in later visits to the same spot.
- PaulKeeble 10mo agoI loved working remotely but I very quickly found I needed to schedule water cooler chats and be super available and quick to jump onto video call. That social aspect really matters and if you have a hybrid environment then the WFH people are getting left out and its harming their career. But in organisations that are almost entirely remote you have to spend the time to be social intentionally.