Researchers found working from home can lead to weight gain, increased musculoskeletal pain, exhaustion and burnout, while some workers labelled the use of webcams at home an “invasion of privacy”.They also faced new expenses, forking out for equipment and increased bills, while their bosses financially benefited from their employees’ increased productivity and tendency to work longer hours and on their days off. The study, published in the Journal of Industrial Health, also identified some positives for workers, such as improved flexibility, and the ability to spend the time usually reserved for commuting on family, exercise, chores and more.It was based on in-depth focus group interviews with 32 Australian workers, who were drawn from a larger study about people’s experience working from home during lockdowns. La Trobe University Associate Professor Jodi Oakman found the negatives outweigh the positives for most participants, though some of the difficulties – such as working while children were home – may not be a factor outside of stay-at-home orders. She said the current Covid rules on working from home were unclear, making it more difficult. “Employers are probably struggling to actually make sense of what to do,” she said. “We’re in this really messy stage at the minute.“Are we working from home, or are we not?” She said organisations and managers need to do more to support their employees, with a “hybrid” model of home and office work likely to stay beyond the pandemic. “There’s still some gaps in what employers have available to them in terms of guidelines and what they need to do,” she said. “The negatives don’t have to be negative.“Organisations can really take on board what they’ve learned over the last couple of years.“What can we do differently so that we get workers who are really happy and satisfied?”She said key strategies from her study included setting clear expectations and tasks, trusting employees to do their work as opposed to surveilling them and ensuring they have necessary equipment at home. “Trust your employees, that really matters,” she said. “How clear you are about what they need to do is really important for employees’ stress levels. “If there’s good communication between employers and employees, you can really quickly improve people’s physical and mental health and their productivity, because you open the dialogue for them to talk about what they need or what they’re missing.“Monitor their workload, be cognisant that you’re not giving them too much, nor insufficient … and make sure that deadlines are reasonable.“(Managers and supervisors) can really have a strong influence on how well those employees cope.”
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