A Review on the Impacts of
Work from Home Arrangement on Health and Business Operation during COVID-19 Pandemic
The development in information technologies facilitates digitalisation and a growing globalising endeavour leading to a significant improvement in temporal and spatial flexibility of business operations. While the potential benefits of work from home (WFH) arrangement including enhanced work-life balance and increased sense of autonomy have been advocated, the concerns associated with the policy such as time pressure and work intensity have been reported1. The current outbreak of COVID-19 has profoundly changed working life that mandated limited mobility, if not total lockdown, has been implemented in many regions globally catalysing the application of WFH mode of operation. Hence, the purpose of this article is to review the impacts of WFH on public health and productivity during the current pandemic.
Countering the Spread of COVID-19 by Social Distancing
The outbreak of COVID-19 has adversely impacted more than 200 countries/regions globally, including Hong Kong. Before vaccines for the disease become available, behavioural change is one of the main measures for preventing further spread of the virus. Particularly, social distancing measures such as social lockdown or encouraging people to stay at home in order to reduce the flow of people and interpersonal contacts are advocated by many governments2. In Hong Kong, the government announced that all government employees, except those providing emergency and essential public services, should work from home during the pandemic. It also urged employers to allow their staff to work from home as far as possible according to their operational needs3.
In a recent evaluation on the association between social distancing stringency and mortality from COVID-19 infections, social distancing was shown to provide protective effect against COVID-19 mortalities. In the study, stringency of social distancing was estimated based on 3 dimensions including the extent of person-to-person encounters, changes in average distance travelled and visitation to non-essential venues compared to a pre-COVID-19 period, whereas the association between social distancing and new fatalities was evaluated by Poisson regression models. The results suggested that stringent social distancing measures generated protective effect against COVID-19 mortality after 2 weeks of implementation (mortality proportion ratio [MPR]: 0.79, 95% confident interval [CI]: 0.46 to 1.35) while more relaxed measures took 11 weeks to produce a protective effect4. The findings thus indicated the public health benefit of social distancing in controlling the impact of COVID-19.
The Health Impact of WFH Arrangement
In addition to control the spread of COVID-19, a range of positive effects are associated with WFH arrangement. Practically, WFH arrangement reduces travel costs for the employees and allow better work-life balance and enhanced flexibility. Moreover, as traffic is less under WFH policy, congestions and traffic-related pollutions are expected to be reduced5. In the health perspective, WFH arrangement would possibly reduce the risks of certain physical injuries in workplace. In particular, a cross-sectional survey of 1,428 office workers from 54 workplaces indicated that biopsychosocial factors such as mental demands, work repetitiveness, self-rated perception of the ergonomics of the desk and size of office space were associated with self-reported musculoskeletal symptoms in the lower extremities6.
Besides workplace-related injuries, a more recent study utilising longitudinal data on 570 women with young children in the United States showed that working from home and work stress predicted within-individual changes in depressive symptoms between 6 and 24 months post-childbirth, whereas women who worked from home reported a statistically significant decrease in depression scores over time. Hence, the findings suggested that reducing stress in the workplace and allowing women to work from home would improve mental wellbeing among women resume work soon after childbirth7.
Notably, WFH arrangement facilitates employees with disabilities or chronic diseases to perform their job duties. It has been reported that psychosocial problems, including work-home interference and a lack of acceptance of the chronic disease, are the most outstanding work-related issue encountered by employees with chronic disease who experienced work-related problems. WFH was one of the most preferred work accommodations for this group of employees8.
While the benefits of WFH arrangement have been widely reported, there are investigations reporting opposing findings. As the duration employees stay at home increases, the risk associated with home working environment is expected to increase. Besides, the concern on increased risks of social isolation has been addressed. Importantly, WFH arrangement would increase the risk of blurring the boundaries between work and home time, whereas this risk would potentially be amplified during COVID-19 pandemic by the multiplication of home duties such as caring for children9. Hence, WFH arrangement would generate a wide spectrum of health impacts, both beneficial and harmful, in real-world settings and the outcomes of WFH arrangement is merely situational.
Will WFH Reduces Productivity?
There are numerous studies exploring the impact of flexible work locations on business operations in recent decades. For instance, a previous meta-analysis of 46 studies involving 12,883 employees demonstrated that teleworking was associated with beneficial effects on perceived autonomy (r: 0.19, 95%CI: 0.16 to 0.22) and lowering work-family conflict (r: -0.11, 95%CI: -0.13 to -0.10). Essentially, teleworking appeared to have no detrimental effects on the quality of workplace relationships. Moreover, partially mediated by the improved perceived autonomy, benefits on job satisfaction, performance, turnover intent and role stress were indicated10.
In a more recent intervention study involving 2,912 employees in a Dutch financial company, the outcomes of new ways of working (NWW) were assessed. NWW is characterised by temporal and spatial flexibility combined with extensive use of information and communication technologies and performance-based management. The work-non-work balance, health and wellbeing as well as job-related outcomes of the employees were compared between intervention group (n = 2,391) and the reference group (n = 521) at 3 time points: one/two months before, 4 months after and 10 months after implementation of NWW. The results reflected that a significant shift from hours worked at office to work-at-home 10 months after implementation of NWW (4.55 hours/week to 12.97 hours/week, p < 0.0001). Although commuting time was reduced, the employees remained working on week days and during day time. Although the difference was small, increased working hours were reported among employees on NWW ([10-month after NWW] 36.54 hours/weeks versus [baseline] 36.06 hours/weeks, p = 0.034). Importantly, reported stress, fatigue, and job-related outcomes remained favourable and largely unaffected11. These findings further revealed that temporal and spatial flexibility for employees does not necessary affect the productivity of business operations.
The Importance of Management Support
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a change in the working arrangement of millions of employees to continue to work at home. Although the concept of WFH has been introduced for several decades, findings on its impacts on health and wellbeing of employees as well as operational efficiency are inconsistent. In fact, the interactions between work, physical health and psychological wellbeing of employees are highly complicated that the outcomes of WFH arrangement are influenced by various factors including organisational culture, job characteristics and management support12,13. In particular, management support plays a determining role in producing preferable outcomes of WFH arrangement. For instance, risks of injury in workplaces are commonly controlled, such as with ergonomically designed furniture and appropriate lighting, and inspected by qualified personnel. However, the same type of injury risk at home is often ignored. Hence, guidance and reminders on occupational health at home offices including proper design of working station, physical activities and regulated rest breaks are required in implementing WFH13.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, WFH arrangement would be implemented in certain industries. It is essential for the managements of organisation to address formalised WFH policies that consider work-home boundary, key performance indices, facilitation of co-worker networking, and training for managers in order to ensure promising business operational and health outcomes of employees.
References
1. Robelski et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019;16(13):2379. 2. Okuhara et al. Patient Educ Couns. 2020;103(12):2588-2593. 3. HK Government. News: Govt work arrangement announced. 4. Gurubaran et al. Value Heal. 2020;23:S557. 5. Vander Elst et al. J Occup Environ Med. 2020;62(12):e776-e777. 6. Janwantanakul et al. Arch Med Res. 2009;40(3):216-222. 7. Shepherd-Banigan et al. Int J Behav Med. 2016;23(1):102-111. 8. Varekamp et al. Occup Med (Lond). 2010;60(4):287-293. 9. Bouziri et al. Occup Environ Med. 2020;77(7):509-510. 10. Gajendran et al. J Appl Psychol. 2007;92(6):1524-1541. 11. Nijp et al. Chronobiol Int. 2016;33(6):604-618. 12. Vander Elst et al. J Occup Environ Med. 2017;59(10):e180-e186. 13. Allen et al. Psychol Sci Public Interes. 2015;16(2):40-68.
