WFH sounds good but is not the perfect way to work

If you are one of the lucky ones who has enjoyed some parts of the lockdown, you might just be one of many who are thinking about turning this temporary wfh (work from home) solution to Covid-19 into a permanent way of life. But before you make that decision, it can be useful to recognise that being at home for your job has both benefits and drawbacks. In a fascinating study, Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom found that telecommuting raised worker productivity and decreased employee attrition, sick days, and time off and saved the company money by reducing the need for office space, at the same time that employees saved commute time, gas money, and the wear and tear of having to get to work on time. At first glance it looked like a win for everyone.

But there was one problem. At the end of the study, more than half of the volunteers chose not to work at home 100 per cent of the time. The reason? They felt lonely.

David described a similar feeling. He told me that he had enjoyed the combination of being on his own part of the time and being with colleagues and business contacts the other part. “I didn’t realise how important those connections were until the Covid shutdown,” he said. “Now I really crave those in-person contacts. I’m socialising with friends and business connections all the time on the screen, but it’s not the same. I don’t really understand it, but

I’m missing even just being able to shake hands with someone.”

Feelings of isolation and loneliness can make it hard to get your work done. But even if you’re still productive, those feelings can lead to emotional difficulties, including depression and anxiety; and they can also contribute to a wide range of physical issues.

Researchers have long recognised the importance of social contact in maintaining physical and mental health. There are even studies explaining the physiological impact of David’s missing handshakes. According to research, social contact can calm and soothe some of the chemical reactions to stress that make our bodies and psyches more vulnerable. Which is simply to say that there are physiological reasons that even if you like working from home, it can make you feel a little down simply because you are not having social contact with your work buddies.

Add to this package feelings of stress about not getting enough work done, and you have a recipe for feeling down, anxious, and generally overwhelmed even as the world begins to open up after the Covid-19 lockdown.

“But I really want to stay home after the lockdown,” you say? That’s totally fine. There are pros and cons to both sides of this question. In a thoughtful article about life after leaving his corporate job, Scott Mautz says that even though he was lonely, the positives of working from home far outweighed the negatives for him. One ambitious study concludes that the findings about the superiority or inferiority of either choice are “highly ambiguous” and depend on a number of factors, including the personality of the employee, the type of business, and the responses of co-workers, team members, and family members.

What’s important is to remember that when working from home, you can get surprisingly lonely, and to make adjustments accordingly, so that your loneliness doesn’t morph into depression, anxiety, or just a general sense of the blahs.

Looking for any kind of perfect solution can itself lead to the blues, because nothing is truly perfect. So whatever you choose will have good and bad components, and try to enjoy whatever you’ve chosen without expecting it to meet all of your needs.

Researchers have long recognised the importance of social contact in maintaining physical and mental health.