Working From Home: Experiences of Home-Working, Health Behavior and Well-Being During the 2020 UK COVID-19 Lockdown

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Abstract

This study shows that adaptations to working practices, in response to the Spring 2020 UK Covid-19 lockdown, incidentally affected health behaviours (e.g., physical activity, sedentary behaviour, dietary consumption) and wellbeing. Outside of the pandemic context, this suggests that organisational policies should encourage home-working practices that shield employee health and wellbeing.

Objective

The Spring 2020 UK COVID-19 lockdown required normally office-based workers to modify their work-related practices to work at home. This study explored workers' experiences of adapting to home working, health behaviors and well-being.

Methods

Twenty-seven home working employees (19 women; aged 23–57 years), from various industry sectors, gave individual semi-structured interviews. Topics focused on home working experiences, routine adaptations, and changes in health behaviors and well-being.

Results

Four themes were extracted: changes to the work interface; adaptations to a new workspace; changes to work-life balance; and adjustments to a new social context. Notably, participants reported greater reliance on computer-based interactions, which they felt discouraged physical activity and increased sitting. Working in a domestic environment reportedly challenged work-home boundaries.

Conclusions

Work practices can incidentally detrimentally impact health-related behaviors and well-being. Organizations should develop policies and procedures to promote health-conducive home working.

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Most cited references 63

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The behaviour change wheel: A new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions

Susan Michie, Maartje M. van Stralen, Robert H. West (2012)

Background Improving the design and implementation of evidence-based practice depends on successful behaviour change interventions. This requires an appropriate method for characterising interventions and linking them to an analysis of the targeted behaviour. There exists a plethora of frameworks of behaviour change interventions, but it is not clear how well they serve this purpose. This paper evaluates these frameworks, and develops and evaluates a new framework aimed at overcoming their limitations. Methods A systematic search of electronic databases and consultation with behaviour change experts were used to identify frameworks of behaviour change interventions. These were evaluated according to three criteria: comprehensiveness, coherence, and a clear link to an overarching model of behaviour. A new framework was developed to meet these criteria. The reliability with which it could be applied was examined in two domains of behaviour change: tobacco control and obesity. Results Nineteen frameworks were identified covering nine intervention functions and seven policy categories that could enable those interventions. None of the frameworks reviewed covered the full range of intervention functions or policies, and only a minority met the criteria of coherence or linkage to a model of behaviour. At the centre of a proposed new framework is a 'behaviour system' involving three essential conditions: capability, opportunity, and motivation (what we term the 'COM-B system'). This forms the hub of a 'behaviour change wheel' (BCW) around which are positioned the nine intervention functions aimed at addressing deficits in one or more of these conditions; around this are placed seven categories of policy that could enable those interventions to occur. The BCW was used reliably to characterise interventions within the English Department of Health's 2010 tobacco control strategy and the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence's guidance on reducing obesity. Conclusions Interventions and policies to change behaviour can be usefully characterised by means of a BCW comprising: a 'behaviour system' at the hub, encircled by intervention functions and then by policy categories. Research is needed to establish how far the BCW can lead to more efficient design of effective interventions.

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How Effective Is Telecommuting? Assessing the Status of Our Scientific Findings.

Kristen M. Shockley, Tammy Allen, Timothy D Golden (2015)

Telecommuting has become an increasingly popular work mode that has generated significant interest from scholars and practitioners alike. With recent advances in technology that enable mobile connections at ever-affordable rates, working away from the office as a telecommuter has become increasingly available to many workers around the world. Since the term telecommuting was first coined in the 1970s, scholars and practitioners have debated the merits of working away from the office, as it represents a fundamental shift in how organizations have historically done business. Complicating efforts to truly understand the implications of telecommuting have been the widely varying definitions and conceptualizations of telecommuting and the diverse fields in which research has taken place.Our objective in this article is to review existing research on telecommuting in an effort to better understand what we as a scientific community know about telecommuting and its implications. In so doing, we aim to bring to the surface some of the intricacies associated with telecommuting research so that we may shed insights into the debate regarding telecommuting's benefits and drawbacks. We attempt to sift through the divergent and at times conflicting literature to develop an overall sense of the status of our scientific findings, in an effort to identify not only what we know and what we think we know about telecommuting, but also what we must yet learn to fully understand this increasingly important work mode.After a brief review of the history of telecommuting and its prevalence, we begin by discussing the definitional challenges inherent within existing literature and offer a comprehensive definition of telecommuting rooted in existing research. Our review starts by highlighting the need to interpret existing findings with an understanding of how the extent of telecommuting practiced by participants in a study is likely to alter conclusions that may be drawn. We then review telecommuting's implications for employees' work-family issues, attitudes, and work outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment and identification, stress, performance, wages, withdrawal behaviors, and firm-level metrics. Our article continues by discussing research findings concerning salient contextual issues that might influence or alter the impact of telecommuting, including the nature of the work performed while telecommuting, interpersonal processes such as knowledge sharing and innovation, and additional considerations that include motives for telecommuting such as family responsibilities. We also cover organizational culture and support that may shape the telecommuting experience, after which we discuss the community and societal effects of telecommuting, including its effects on traffic and emissions, business continuity, and work opportunities, as well as the potential impact on societal ties. Selected examples of telecommuting legislation and policies are also provided in an effort to inform readers regarding the status of the national debate and its legislative implications. Our synthesis concludes by offering recommendations for telecommuting research and practice that aim to improve the quality of data on telecommuting as well as identify areas of research in need of development.

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Changes in Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior in Response to COVID-19 and Their Associations with Mental Health in 3052 US Adults

Jacob Meyer, Cillian P McDowell, Jeni Lansing … (2020)

The COVID-19 pandemic altered many facets of life. We aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19-related public health guidelines on physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior, mental health, and their interrelations. Cross-sectional data were collected from 3052 US adults 3–8 April 2020 (from all 50 states). Participants self-reported pre- and post-COVID-19 levels of moderate and vigorous PA, sitting, and screen time. Currently-followed public health guidelines, stress, loneliness, positive mental health (PMH), social connectedness, and depressive and anxiety symptoms were self-reported. Participants were grouped by meeting US PA guidelines, reporting ≥8 h/day of sitting, or ≥8 h/day of screen time, pre- and post-COVID-19. Overall, 62% of participants were female, with age ranging from 18–24 (16.6% of sample) to 75+ (9.3%). Self-reported PA was lower post-COVID among participants reporting being previously active (mean change: −32.3% [95% CI: −36.3%, −28.1%]) but largely unchanged among previously inactive participants (+2.3% [−3.5%, +8.1%]). No longer meeting PA guidelines and increased screen time were associated with worse depression, loneliness, stress, and PMH (p < 0.001). Self-isolation/quarantine was associated with higher depressive and anxiety symptoms compared to social distancing (p < 0.001). Maintaining and enhancing physical activity participation and limiting screen time increases during abrupt societal changes may mitigate the mental health consequences.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Samuel Keightley

Myanna Duncan

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): J Occup Environ Med

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): J Occup Environ Med

Journal ID (publisher-id): JOEM

Title: Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

ISSN (Print): 1076-2752

ISSN (Electronic): 1536-5948

Publication date (Print): April 2023

Publication date (Electronic): 17 November 2022

Volume: 65

Issue: 4

Pages: 330-336

Affiliations

From the Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF, UK (S.K., M.D., B.G.); and Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK (B.G.).

Author notes

[*]Address correspondence to: Benjamin Gardner, DPhil, Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, Addison House, Guy’s Campus London, SE1 1UL ( benjamin.gardner@ 123456kcl.ac.uk ).

Article

Publisher ID: JOEM_220241 Accession ID: 00008

DOI: 10.1097/JOM.0000000000002757

PMC ID: 10090341

PubMed ID: 36395077

SO-VID: 19211bf2-f30a-49f9-9208-189ff944fb16

License:

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CCBY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Keywords: occupational psychology,work practices,health behaviors,health,well-being,covid-19

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Keywords: occupational psychology, work practices, health behaviors, health, well-being, covid-19

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Working From Home: Experiences of Home-Working, Health Behavior and Well-Being During the 2020 UK COVID-19 Lockdown

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Novel Coronavirus Disease COVID-19

Most cited references 63

The behaviour change wheel: A new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions

How Effective Is Telecommuting? Assessing the Status of Our Scientific Findings.

Changes in Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior in Response to COVID-19 and Their Associations with Mental Health in 3052 US Adults

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Cited by 1

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