Exploring the relationship between working from home, mental and physical health and wellbeing: a systematic review

Abstract

BackgroundUnderstanding the impact of working from home on health and wellbeing is of great interest to employers and employees alike, with a strong need for up-to-date guidance. The aim of this systematic review was to identify, appraise and synthesise existing research evidence that explores the impact of home working on health and wellbeing outcomes for working people and health inequalities in the population.MethodsWe conducted a systematic review of qualitative, quantitative and observational studies. We searched databases, reference lists and UK grey literature and completed citation searching of included papers. We extracted and tabulated key data from the included papers and synthesised narratively. Factors associated with the health and wellbeing of people working at home reported in the literature were displayed by constructing mind maps of each individual factor which had been identified. The findings were combined with an a priori model to develop a final model, which was validated in consultation with stakeholders.ResultsOf 96 studies which were found to meet the inclusion criteria for the review, 30 studies were published before the COVID-19 pandemic and a further 66 were published during the pandemic. The quality of evidence was limited by the study designs employed by the authors, with the majority of studies being cross-sectional surveys (n= 59). For the most part, for studies which collected quantitative data, measures were self-reported. The largest volume of evidence identified consisted of studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic which looked at factors which influence the relationship between working from home and measures relating to mental health and wellbeing.Fifteen studies which considered the potential for working at home to have different effects for different subgroups suggested that working at home may have more negative consequences during the COVID-19 pandemic for women and in particular, mothers. There was very little evidence on age (two studies), ethnicity (one study), education or income (two studies) in terms of moderating home working effects, and very limited evidence from before the COVID-19 pandemic.The concept of enforced working from home and having ‘no choice’ was reported in only one paper prior to the pandemic and two papers reporting on working from home as a result of COVID-19. However, the concept of lack of choice around working from home was implicit in much of the literature – even though it was not directly measured. There were no clear patterns of wellbeing measures which changed from positive to negative association (or vice versa) during the pandemic.LimitationsThe quality of the evidence base was very much limited by study designs, particularly for studies published during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the majority of studies consisting of data collected by cross-sectional surveys (often online). Due to the rapidly expanding nature of the evidence on this topic, it is possible that new studies were published after the final citation searches were conducted.DiscussionThe evidence base for the factors which influence the relationship between home working and health-related outcomes has expanded significantly as a result of the need for those whose work could be done from home to work at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings suggest that there are factors relating to the external context, the role of employers and the circumstances of the employee which contribute to determining whether someone works at home and what the associated impacts on health and wellbeing may be. Learning from the COVID-19 lockdown experience will be important to inform future policy on home and hybrid working.Future workThere is a need for better-quality studies of the health impact of home working, in particularly studies which recruit a range of participants who are representative of the working population and which are designed to minimise sampling/recruitment biases and response biases.FundingThis project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Research programme (project reference 18/93 PHR Public Health Review Team) and will be published in full inPublic Health Research; Vol. 11, No. 4. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.Study registrationThis study is registered as PROSPERO 2021 CRD42021253474.