Burnout and isolation: Impact of working from home

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a variety of workplace ills, including “the great resignation,” “quiet resignation,” “overemployment,” labor shortages, and conflicts between managers and employees over returning to work. face-to-face work.

Employee burnout and well-being can be at the heart of several of these problems.

Two new studies highlight the importance of social connection in the workplace and illustrate why working from home may not be the optimal workplace arrangement. Hybrid work-from-home schedules can help prevent burnout and improve mental health.

So what is exhaustion?

The International Classification of Diseases describes burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic job stress that has not been successfully managed.” As a diagnosable condition, burnout consists of three symptoms: physical exhaustion, lack of commitment to work and colleagues, and cynicism about work and career.

For many who have experienced burnout, it can feel like the metaphor that describes it: something akin to a shriveled, burnt matchstick, cold to the touch.

What causes burnout and how can it be stopped?

According to global research, approximately 50 percent of employees and 53 percent of managers are burned out in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Workplaces are clearly not thriving.

As a social epidemiologist studying contemporary emotional distress in the context of public health crises, I have been interested in understanding what factors contribute to burnout and how it can be successfully managed, particularly given the current challenges created by COVID-19.

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You might think that researchers know everything there is to know about burnout right now. After all, depletion has been studied since at least the late 1970s.

Many of the studies since then have focused on workplace conditions such as pay, hours, management styles and the nebulous “workplace culture”.

As such, managing burnout has often focused on reshaping work environments and reforming bad managers. While these are, of course, necessary, it is not immediately clear that they are sufficient.

With the outbreak of the pandemic, many people have new levels of awareness about the impossibility of separating work from life.

For some, that awareness comes from how tired they are when they get home from a shift. For others who work from home, it may come from the blurring of the divide between home and office.

In any case, our emotional and psychological well-being accompanies us both at work and at home. As such, it makes sense that we take a holistic view of burnout. Social connection is a key driver of burnout.

The social costs and benefits of working from home

In a recent study conducted by my lab at Simon Fraser University, we sought to identify the most important risk factors for burnout.

We examined a variety of variables, including the classic factors of workload, satisfaction with salary, dignity in the workplace, control over one’s own work, and salary adequacy, as well as newer variables such as ownership. of housing, a variety of demographic factors, social support, and loneliness.

In conducting this study, we found that loneliness and lack of social support are major contributors to burnout, perhaps as important, if not more so, than physical health and financial security.

In short, the study contributes to a growing understanding of burnout as an isolation-driven social problem.

One potential and evolving source of isolation is the emerging trend of working from home. As many people have been privileged to learn, there are many benefits to working from home.

It allows people to save time on the go and have more freedom to do housework or take a quick nap on their breaks. This means they have more time and energy for friends and family at the end of the day.

On the other hand, working from home means missing out on those cooler conversations and casual collisions with co-workers, which have a surprisingly profound impact on well-being.

Furthermore, considering the importance of workplaces and schools for finding and building friendships, the loss of these spaces could have serious long-term consequences for people’s social health, especially if the time spent with others people at work now spend alone at home.

The importance of social connection for health and happiness

To understand the mental health impacts of working from home, my team conducted a second study to look at differences in self-rated mental health between people who worked only from home, only in person, or who worked partially in person and partially in person. home.

We control for potentially important factors such as income, hours of work, occupation, age, gender and ethnicity.

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Our results showed that 54 percent of those who worked alone in person and 63 percent of those who worked alone at home reported good or excellent mental health.

From these results, you can conclude that working from home is best for mental health, a finding contrary to a growing number of studies highlighting the downsides and challenges of working from home.

There’s a catch, though: A shocking 87 percent of those who reported a hybrid work arrangement, meaning they worked partially in person and partially at home, were in good or excellent mental health.

While the type of work that takes place at home and in person certainly shapes these trends, our findings point to the possibility that hybrid work could give employees the best of both worlds, especially in the context of our first study, which highlighted the importance of social connection with wellness in the workplace.

In fact, hybrid work arrangements can allow employees to maintain those positive connections with their colleagues while also providing a better work-life balance.

It really can be the best of both worlds, at least for those who can work this way.

As employees and employers continue to adjust to the new normal amid the COVID-19 pandemic, our research provides a stark reminder for all of us to remember the importance of social connection.

It’s all too easy to forget that strong social relationships and communities are the foundation for health and happiness in and out of the workplace.

By Kiffer George Card, Simon Fraser University (The Conversation)