What's working from home doing to your mental health? We tracked 16,000 Australians to find out

Working from home has become a fixture of Australian work culture, but its effect on mental health is still widely debated.

Can working from home boost your mental health? If so, how many days a week are best? Whose wellbeing benefits the most? And is that because there's no commute?

These are among questions we answered in our new study, based on long-term survey data from more than 16,000 Australian workers.

We found working from home boosts women's mental health more than men's.

What we did

We analysed 20 years of data from the national Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, which allowed us to track the work and mental health of more than 16,000 employees.

We didn't include two years of the COVID pandemic (2020 and 2021), because people's mental health then could have been shaped by factors unrelated to working from home.

The data allowed us to track people over time and examine how their mental health changed alongside their commuting patterns and working from home arrangements.

Our statistical models removed any changes driven by major life events (for example, job moves or the arrival of children).

We focused on two things to see if there was any effect on mental health: commuting time and working from home.

We also examined whether these effects differed between people with good and poor mental health, a novel feature of our study.

Commuting affects men and women differently

For women, commuting time had no detectable effect on mental health. But for men, longer commutes were tied to poorer mental health for those who already had strained mental health.

The effect was modest. For a man near the middle of the mental health distribution (close to the median), adding half an hour to his one-way commute reduced reported mental health by roughly the same amount as a 2% drop in household income.

Hybrid working was best for women

Working from home had a strong positive effect on women's mental health, but only in certain circumstances.

The biggest gains were recorded when women worked mainly from home while still spending some time (one to two days) in the office or on-site each week.

For women with poor mental health, this arrangement led to better mental health than working exclusively on-site. Gains were comparable to those from a 15% rise in household income.

This finding echoes an earlier study, which found the same type of hybrid work arrangements led to improved job satisfaction and productivity.

The mental health benefits for women were not just a result of saving time on commuting. Because our analysis accounted for commuting separately, these benefits reflected other positive aspects of working from home. These include less work stress or helping them to juggle work and family life.

Light or occasional working from home had no clear effect on women's mental health. The evidence for full-time home working from home was less definitive, largely because we saw relatively few women doing this.

For men, working from home had no statistically reliable effect on mental health, either positive or negative, regardless of how many days they worked from home or on-site.

This may reflect the gendered distribution of tasks in Australian households, as well as the fact that men's social and friendship networks tend to be more work-based.

What's the key message?

Workers with poorer mental health are the most sensitive to long commutes and the most likely to benefit from substantial working from home arrangements. This is partly because people with poor mental health already have more limited capacity to deal with stressful events.

For women with poor mental health, working from home can represent a major boost to wellbeing. For men with poor mental health, the resulting reduction of commute times can help too.

However, workers with strong mental health appear less sensitive to both commuting and working-from-home patterns. They may still value flexibility, but the mental health implications of their work arrangements are smaller.

What next?

Here are our recommendations based on our findings.

If you're a worker, monitor how commuting and different work-from-home patterns affect your own wellbeing rather than assuming there is a single best approach. If you struggle with mental health, plan your most demanding tasks for days when you are working in the environment where you feel most comfortable.

If you're an employer, offer flexible working-from-home arrangements, especially for employees who struggle with mental health. Consider hybrid models that include both home and office time, since these appear most beneficial. Treat commuting time as a factor in workload and wellbeing discussions. Avoid one-size-fits-all return-to-office policies.

If you make public policy, invest in reducing congestion and improving public transport capacity. Strengthen frameworks that encourage flexible work arrangements. Support access to mental health services.

TheConversation.com

Author:

1. Jan Kabatek – Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne
2. Ferdi Botha – Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne

https://theconversation.com/whats-working-from-home-doing-to-your-mental-health-we-tracked-16-000-australians-to-find-out-270356