5 Ways How Working Remotely Can Benefit Our Mental Health

Skipping the commute and open-plan office gives employees more time to focus on their work and leisure, increasing productivity. Pair the higher salary with the possibility of a lower cost of living, and remote workers have a substantial financial advantage over on-site employees. Even if you work for a remote company that binds you to a specific time zone or country, you can still move to cheaper cities or https://remotemode.net/ prioritize lifestyle rather than proximity to the office. People who have to move frequently, like military spouses, can also benefit from having a remote job. This article outlines the benefits of remote work for employees and employers. This post will provide tips and actionable suggestions for remote workers to manage their mental wellbeing and avoid habits or issues that may negatively affect them.

In France, teleworking more than doubled compared to one year before, while it was 1.8 times the level before the pandemic in the United Kingdom and 1.5 times the level before the pandemic in Australia. They should welcome the questions https://remotemode.net/blog/how-remote-work-can-benefit-employees-and-companies/ and have clear answers for you about their efforts. As a measure against COVID-19, keeping a social distance is a public health requirement, and improving workers’ mental health is also simultaneously required (Fingret, 2000).

Health insurance provision via a local partner

The percentage of weekly working time WFH had a negative influence on stress-related symptoms in the present study. Accordingly, employees who work a higher percentage of their weekly hours from home reported more psychological and physical symptoms than employees who WFH fewer hours. In contrast, the percentage of weekly work time spent in the home office had no influence on work ability (Hypothesis 1a). Consistent with the findings of Moretti et al. [16] and contrary to our reasoning, the amount of WFH had a negative impact on employee job satisfaction (Hypothesis 2). It is often believed that telework enhances job satisfaction, yet research has found both positive and negative relationships.

In a representative survey on working hours conducted by the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), approximately 12% of employees stated that they had an agreement on teleworking [33]. These employees reported a greater balance between resources and burdens of work compared to employees without such agreements. For the latter, work demands such as overtime outweighed the increased flexibility as an example of workplace resources. According to [9], other important components of such a company agreement regarding WFH include documentation of working hours, agreements on setting up and financing the mobile or home workplace, data protection issues, etc.

Better Work-Life Balance

In the busy world we live in time is invaluable and we never seem to have enough of it. So another of the benefits of remote working for employers is that employees will use their time more productively if they work from home. As well as less time spent traveling, working from home reduces office gossip time, lateness, and time wasted in the coffee shop.

Bettering your skills and knowledge can boost job satisfaction and enhance your mental wellbeing. Flexibility, remote work, and access to endless educational materials online mean developing yourself has never been so easy and accessible. The 3.9 million employees who worked from home at least half time before the pandemic reduced greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking more than 600,000 cars off the road for an entire year.

Give goodies to your remote workers

Finding your schedule and allowing it to be less dictated by the limitations surrounding the demands of your commute is one of the biggest advantages of working from home. You can experiment with an earlier bedtime, additional hours of sleep and an earlier wake-up for your morning work routine in a flexible manner that suits you. If you have a job that takes place online, through a laptop or digitally, you’ll note that on days when it’s snowing or when you feel under the weather, you’ll work from home and everything will turn out just fine.

• Worker location can have a major effect on cost, coverage and application of health insurance benefits, especially where remote workers are based overseas.
• Once you stop commuting because you work from home, you start saving time.
• In this context, 14% of employees in Germany worked from home [41], i.e., approx.
• With these BPO services, you are assured of getting the most out of a WFH setup.
• A range of communication tools for remote workers like Slack, QuizBreaker, and PulseMate make it easy to create strong bonds with colleagues who live in different time zones.

Bellmann and Hübler [3] found that the job satisfaction of employees with explicit agreements for WFH was significantly higher than it was for employees without such agreements. The authors emphasize that especially times of inaccessibility should be explicitly agreed upon. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly fewer employees worked in home offices and often contractual agreements in companies were not formulated. Due to the spontaneous and unexpected COVID-19-related move to the home office, it is reasonable to assume that many companies have not made contractual agreements regarding WFH in time [32].

You may experience the bias some remote workers report.

The time saved by working remotely means less fatigue for employees and more productivity. Introverts who often struggle to maintain energy during social interactions may be the most affected by the return to in-person work. This doesn’t mean, however, that they necessarily want to be fully remote. In a survey conducted by Myers-Briggs Co., a high percentage of individuals who self-classified as introverted preferred a hybrid schedule.

When you work remotely, you don’t spend as much time commuting or traveling in general—and this means less waste and pollution going into the world around us. Despite the fact that one of us, Lynne, has two young children, we have found more time for healthy activities, saved money, taken greater advantage of continuing education, and been more available to our students and families alike. Omnipresent makes it easy to hire, pay, and support your international team.

Bloom (2014) reported that employees working from home answered 13.5% more phone calls than those who were in the office, demonstrating higher productivity in a measurable way. (Bloom and colleagues replicated this finding in 2015.) More recently, Choudhury and colleagues (2021) showed a 4% increase in productivity among U.S. Barrero and colleagues (2020b) estimated that the pandemic significantly reduced U.S. commuting times and that at least one-third of this saved time has been allocated to work-related tasks. Working remotely means that more of our energy and time can be directed at our wellbeing routine.

Having worked from home over the past year, we have personally experienced many of the benefits outlined in this paper. Lynne, as a mother to two young children, used asynchronous teaching to schedule her work around their needs, including online schooling schedules. Both of us have been able to schedule most of our work to match our availability, needing only to work around synchronous meetings.

A Customizable Office

The health benefits of working remotely are something to consider for companies that are looking for ways to improve employee wellness and satisfaction. Working remotely allows you to set your own hours and work at a time that is most convenient for you. If you like to start early in the morning, you can wake up earlier and get right to it! You do not have to worry about being stuck at an office all day long with little downtime. We recognize that these benefits may not be available to everyone working from home, given wide variances in work requirements, personal dynamics, family responsibilities, and more. But as the pandemic recedes and life returns to “normal,” we believe that telecommuting and work-from-home arrangements should continue to be offered as long-term options to employees who can benefit—just as we have.