Coping With Remote Working During Covid-19: The Latest Research, Digested

By Emma Young Covid-19 has changed our working lives, perhaps for good. Home-working is now common, and many of us have been doing it for months. With changing rules and guidelines, some of us have even gone from home-working to socially distanced office-working, to working back at home again. So what do we know about how these changes are affecting our mental health — and what can we do to make our new working lives better? How are we feeling? In January 2019 (pre-Covid-19), 35% of UK employees surveyed for the CIPD (a professional human resources body) reported that work had a positive impact on their mental health, while 27% said that work had a negative impact. By summer 2020, those figures had shifted to 34% and 26% respectively. On these measures, at least, Covid-19 had no obvious impact. In this second survey, employees did report high levels of anxiety about contracting the virus at work — but despite this, half of those who were working remotely were looking forward to returning to their workplace. Almost half of all of the people surveyed also reported that social connections at work had worsened. Clearly, although the impact of work itself on our mental health hadn’t changed, altered work circumstances were — and are — causing difficulties, which are being further explored… How bad is home-working? “It can be argued that the crisis has led to the most significant, intensive social experiment of digital, home-based working t...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Coronavirus Feature Mental health Occupational Source Type: blogs