A landmark longitudinal study spanning two decades and 16,000 Australians has found that working from home and flexible working conditions can have a positive impact on mental health.
The study, authored by researchers from the University of Melbourne, found that hybrid work and reduced commuting time had a beneficial impact on the mental health of men and women who already had mental health issues.
For those who did not have existing low mental health, working from home (WFH) largely had no net impact, the study found.
The research analysed 20 years of data from 2002 to 2019 from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA), an annually conducted longitudinal socio-economic survey of a representative 7,500 Australian households, interviewing all members aged 15 and over.
It found that a reduction in time spent commuting had a positive impact on men with lower existing mental health, while working from home at least half the time had a significantly positive impact on women’s mental health.
“It suggests that adjustments to work regimens have the potential to significantly improve the mental health outcomes of individuals at risk of mental illness, with the knock-on benefits being reduced absenteeism and improved productivity,” the report said.
“While we do not see significant effects among respondents with satisfactory levels of mental health, it is certainly possible that these individuals benefit from WFH arrangements and reduced commuting times in other ways.
“Our analysis indicates that allowing employees to retain WFH arrangements is likely to prove beneficial to those who are vulnerable, while having no detrimental effects on the mental health of other employees.”
The rise of WFH
The average time an Australian spends commuting each day has declined in the last two decades, from 61 minutes in 2019 to 52 minutes in 2023.
Before 2019, about a quarter of Australians worked some part of their time from home.
This increased to nearly 40 per cent during the pandemic, and now more than one in three Australians work at least partly from home.
The research found that working from home is beneficial for women, but not because of reduced commuting time.
“Rather, WFH arrangements have a positive effect per se, which increases their desirability as a tool for fostering healthy workplace practices,” the report said.
“Even though men do not benefit from WFH arrangements directly, they can experience improvements of their mental health because of the reductions of commuting time associated with WFH.”
The importance of hybrid work
One of the report’s authors, the University of Melbourne’s Jan Kabataek, said the findings prove the effectiveness of hybrid working arrangements.
“The biggest gains for women were found for work from home arrangements, which involved the majority of days spent at home, but retaining at least one or two days of work from the office or on-site,” Kabataek told the ABC.
“You are retaining the connection to the firm and to your colleagues, you can talk in person, and you are retaining those social ties, but you also have this work from home aspect that is strong enough to make a difference.”
The study is the first of its kind to investigate the impacts of working from home in Australia in this format.
Previous reports have focused more on anecdotal, survey-based research, which have continually found that flexible work is hugely beneficial for workers, and often has no negative impact on productivity or efficiency.
Despite these findings, a number of large tech companies are moving to bring their workers back into the office full-time.
Earlier this month social media giant Instagram announced it would be requiring its workers to attend a physical office every day they are working from February next year, months after Amazon did the same for its corporate workers.
The situation may be different in Australia, with research finding that many employers have given up on plans to bring employees back into the office.
The study last year found that 80 per cent of bosses surveyed expect workers to be back in the office full-time within three years, but this figure had dropped to just over 20 per cent this year.
