Home office and mental stress – health

SZ: More and more companies and authorities are letting their employees work from home. How is this new workplace affecting people’s well-being?

Bettina Kubicek: There are definitely health benefits for people who work from home. For example, they report less exhaustion in the long term, fewer depressive symptoms and fewer sleep problems than other employees. But even in the short term, employees complain less about fatigue on days when they work from home.

Fatigue and exhaustion can be both a harbinger and a symptom of burnout. So does the home office offer a protective working atmosphere?

If we define exhaustion as a core dimension of burnout, specifically emotional exhaustion, then one could interpret the findings in this way. When people work from home, they report less emotional exhaustion. Studies that would allow an actual causal statement such as “working from home leads to less burnout” are very rare. Most of these are surveys of employees, in which other influencing factors cannot be ruled out.

What exactly could protect the psyche of people working from home?

A positive aspect is certainly the perceived autonomy and control. It has a positive effect if employees have more leeway to divide up their work and optimally integrate breaks into their everyday work. So they tire less quickly. People can also choose where they do their work.

This is also perceived positively by employees. This gives you the opportunity to adapt your working environment to your needs. At the same time, some of the requirements or stressors that we are usually confronted with in everyday work, such as a long, strenuous commute to work, are eliminated. Instead, people can use this time for relaxation.

It is possible that people experience their employers as more supportive because they offer mobile working or home office time at all, regardless of the pandemic, and are willing to change working conditions in such a way that employees can better combine work and private life. This feeling can also contribute to greater well-being.

Can there also be too much homework?

From previous research, we know that it really depends on the extent of home office, whether this work design has an advantageous effect or whether it poses challenges and disadvantageous effects.

What disadvantages can that be?

It is more difficult to encourage informal communication via video conferencing tools or other digital media. These personal conversations about private matters, but also about professional matters, are very important for the quality of the relationship within a team and with the company. People who feel they belong to the company also feel connected to their colleagues and trust them. This social fabric can crumble.

The experience of the pandemic has also shown that video conferencing can be very tiring. How are these technologies themselves a problem when it comes to mental wellbeing?

Especially during the pandemic, video conferences were scheduled very closely and often not enough breaks were planned. Due to a large number of video conferences, you also work more than usual on the screen. Of course, screen work can also be tiring for the body and eyes. There is also a lack of balance in everyday work. In the company there is a bit of movement on the way to the conference room and sometimes also a short mental break or a short personal conversation.

All of that is missing in the home office. That is the challenge: that something that otherwise happens naturally in everyday office life is no longer anchored in the structure of the work. The employees themselves must ensure that their everyday work is organized accordingly.

Can all these disadvantages of working from home, in turn, promote burnout?

If there is a lack of informal communication and the quality of relationships in the company is poor, this can certainly play a role in whether someone develops burnout. Because a positive social climate and support from colleagues at work can be a protective factor. This is an important resource that also helps to better deal with pressures such as pressure to perform or stress in everyday work.

In conversations with female colleagues, one often learns that they work in the home office beyond the actual limits. Some sit sick at their desks, others work late at night. To what extent is this fuel for burnout?

In fact, people who work from home tend to put in more hours. What they save in travel time, they make available to their employer in the form of work. The blurring of boundaries between work and private life can also be a challenge. It is possible that you will be reminded of work much more in your free time, for example because official documents are lying around.

However, if we are not sufficiently able to switch off from work in our free time, this can of course have an adverse effect on our health. People who find it difficult to mentally separate work and private life and who still devote themselves to professional tasks even when they are not working, even if only in their thoughts, are more likely to report emotional exhaustion or burnout. They are less able to recover from work and rebuild the cognitive and emotional resources that have been used up.

What does it take to better draw the line between work and free time in the home office?

Managers are very important here. They should keep an eye on the health of their employees and react if they see that someone is exhausted. They should also be sensitive and aware of their role model function. For example, if supervisors send and answer e-mails at the weekend, this can put pressure on employees to be available too. The organizations themselves can also offer training for employees, for example on how to best deal with the new technologies or generally working from home.

What can everyone do for themselves?

Depending on what type you are, there are different ways of replacing the missing physical boundaries between work and private life with symbolic boundaries, for example. It makes sense to specify that you only complete tasks up to a certain time, then switch off all work devices and really put documents away. After work, there should still be enough time before bed to mentally distance yourself from work. This improves sleep, which contributes significantly to recovery.

It is also helpful to develop routines that signal to yourself that the working day is either beginning or over. These can be simple rituals, like having a cup of tea at the end of the working day while having a cup of coffee at the beginning of the working day. The coffee indicates I’m in work mode, the tea indicates leisure mode. Switching the desk lamp on or off consciously also serves as a ritual. Or: change clothes before and after work so that you have work clothes and leisure clothes.

If thoughts of work come up in your free time, you can write them down on a note and file them at your desk. Then they are captured and you can devote yourself to them the next day. The head is free again.