Some more homework is needed over work from home

HANDS up who wants more time for your children, less time for yourself, more opportunities to snack and quaff more booze than you should and plenty of healthy eating, lower blood pressure, heightened stress, greater creativity and increased isolation?

The good news is, you can continue to have all of the above and more, or perhaps less, if you work from home.

Confused? Me too. But this is all part of the much-debated working-from-home (WFH) conundrum, which has thrown up a rake of new, contradictory research that proves what we didn’t really know all along.

In fact, almost four years since the pandemic began and a global panic-pivot to remote working commenced, the latest study shows it’s still in test mode – and essentially, we’re guinea pigs, left to our own devices in each of our respective hutches.

The latest large-scale academic review, published in the Journal of Occupational Health, found that working from home can be a poisoned chalice (especially if you’re a woman) – a life elixir if you’ve got the space and peace, but the equivalent of a big, long drink of lethargy, should you be prone to a more sedentary lifestyle.

What category you fall into depends on myriad factors, and therein lies the rub.

The report has highlighted the fact that although WFH has been accepted as a new normal, there’s been zero guidance on how to do it in the most effective and healthy way, taking into account each person’s unique situation – although unsurprisingly, the review found that people on higher incomes often enjoyed home-working more (aren’t most things easier with more money?).

‘In the old days of office working, people realised that if you put everyone in the same room with no sound-proofing, it was all unpleasant and you didn’t have a very productive workforce,’ said Professor

Neil Greenberg, a psychiatrist at King’s College London and one of the study’s authors, in an interview with The Guardian this week. He added that ‘it makes sense’ for organisations and the (British) government to make sure home-workers are doing it as effectively as possible.

Now, making our WFH lives better for both employer and employee is a lovely idea, but a very difficult one to implement.

Most humans would be deeply uncomfortable at surveillance software and AI spyware in their home. Where are those boundaries, and more pertinently, where’s the trust? So no. Hosting the equivalent of an avatar with a clipboard, looking over your shoulder in your home, is not going to help with any rising stress levels.

And I’m not sure if I’d welcome a person coming out to examine if my home office chair is ergonomically friendly. Really, I don’t think I’d fancy any aspect of my home life being scrutinised when it comes to work – whether it’s for my benefit or not.

So it’s a tricky one to navigate, but if you consider the training and attention to detail that goes into office working, it is surprising that we haven’t quite afforded the same respect to working from home at this stage in the game.

AND because the world at large is still trying to decide if it’s a good thing, there is the huge grey area that leads to mental and even physical health issues across the board.

From fear and doubt surrounding career progression to overworking to ‘justify’ your role, from isolation and loneliness to piling on the pounds thanks to the closer proximity to the fridge, fewer steps and a paltry commute time for wine o’clock – working from home is clearly not the perfect, flexible solution that means we can have it all, or that will give us, as that oft-quoted phrase states, ‘the best of both worlds’.

I am a four-day hybrid worker, so two days in the office and at two at home, and I don’t find my WFH time slower or more mindful.

In fact – as the latest report indicates – these days are markedly busier. Personal prepping and commuter time is replaced with school collections.

Time otherwise spent with office chatter and other distractions is used for endless housework chores and skivvying for children.

Not a moment is wasted in a daydream or slacking attack; my office work is done and I somehow manage to make my head spin with other tasks, with any seconds I have to spare.

But that’s simply the territory of being a working mother and it’s my situation. I’m grateful I have the flexibility of both home and office for many reasons, but the biggest one by far is having more presence with my children. I’m lucky to work at my home office and not a kitchen table, and I have a granny’s child-minding help. I enjoy healthy food and exercise anyway, so I don’t need a trip to the office to up my step count.

And here is where being a female remote worker is a good thing – the latest paper highlights how home working during the Covid pandemic was linked with healthier eating by mostly younger workers and females.

The thing is, my situation is not perfect, but I’m happy. However, not everyone is, and many need true guidance and support.

As Greenberg rightly pointed out, we’ve been doing this quite a while now, and it’s about time that we make WFH the best it can be, or ‘stop admiring the problem and actually think about solutions’.

If remote working is in fact here to stay – some companies have decided that it’s not, and have demanded their employees return to the office full time – we need a supportive, individualised approach, not a ‘one size fits all’ – because humans, pardon the pun, don’t quite work like that.

Both our office and home environments need to be conducive to being happy and productive. Until that happens, it seems, we’re not quite getting the best of both worlds.