Survey Reveals the Mental and Physical Health Impacts of Home Working During Covid-19
With working from home set to continue for millions of UK workers, research by the Royal Society for Public Health shows that there are key health and wellbeing disparities between different groups of people who made the move to home working as a result of Covid-19.
The polling revealed that:
- Overall, more people felt working from home was better for their health and wellbeing (45%), compared to around one third (29%) who thought working from home was worse for their health and wellbeing
- However, people who switched to working from home as a result of Covid-19 had experienced health and wellbeing impacts, with the most common being feeling less connected to colleagues (67%), taking less exercise (46%), developing musculoskeletal problems (39%) and disturbed sleep (37%)
- Over one in four (26%) are working from home from either a sofa or a bedroom
- Nearly half (48%) of people who work from a sofa or bedroom said they had developed musculoskeletal problems and nearly two thirds (59%) said they felt more isolated from their colleagues
The findings of the survey also showed that the vast majority of people didn’t want to go back to working in an office full time, with nearly three quarters of people (74%) saying that they wanted to split their time between home working and working in an office.
Article source: Royal Society for Public Health