How has working from home changed society?

Prior to Covid-19, just 4.7% of UK employees worked from home. By April 2020, 46.6% of workers were partly remote. In the autumn of last year, over a quarter of working adults (28%) reportedly still worked from home to at least some extent.  

Despite 91% of global employees holding a positive view of remote working, research indicates the impacts of working from home have been more varied than this. The effects on business productivity and office dynamics, physical health, urban exodus, and the environment are each at times contradictory. 

Business productivity and office dynamics

Research indicates that fully remote employees tend to work longer hours, into evenings and weekends, and take less sick leave. However, discrepancies arise with differing space in the home (such as having a personal office space), available equipment, and domestic responsibilities, to name a few.  

With this in mind, higher-income workers reported more benefits when working from home, while women, people who live alone, and lower-income workers tended to report higher stress levels. Just 29% of high-skilled employees never work from home, compared to a nationwide 52%.  

When Covid-19 restrictions were lifted in 2022, companies began to insist on employees returning to in-person work, which has led to a rise in hybrid employment

When Covid-19 restrictions were lifted in 2022, companies began to insist on employees returning to in-person work, which has led to a rise in hybrid employment. This work has meant “employees benefit from face-to-face collaboration in the office [but they] can also focus on deep, individual work at home”. However, it has also led to an increase in ‘co-location imbalance’. Research shows hybrid office policies that require office attendance a certain number of times per week mean certain employees naturally end up working together more than others, fracturing the workforce into unproductive ‘subgroups’.  

These subgroups can worsen internal dynamics, especially in ‘partially-distributed teams’, where employees work in different locations or some are fully remote while others regularly co-locate. Studies show that ‘power dyads’ can form: in-person employees become the dominant subgroup and end up making significant decisions, while isolated, fully remote workers remain on the organisation’s periphery. 

Physical health

Research about the impacts of working from home on employee health is often contradictory. While some studies suggest remote workers eat more healthily, consuming more fruit, vegetables, and home-made meals, other research suggests they eat more snacks, drink and smoke more, and over 40% put on weight.  

Those working from home also reported feeling less stress and having lower blood pressure 

Most papers have determined that remote work is “more sedentary” than office work, yet those working from home also reported feeling less stress and having lower blood pressure.  

While “younger workers and females benefited the most in terms of healthier eating”, women and those living alone also reported higher stress levels due to their housework or childcare responsibilities. 

Urban exodus

The pandemic drove an ‘urban exodus’: migration out of urban centres, particularly for households with young children. Movers emphasised the “favourability of communities, community ties, participants’ desire to return to their hometown, and proximity to acquaintances”. In comparison, employment and housing were far less significant in driving this exodus, and research is still unclear as to what extent the pandemic was directly responsible for this housing shift.

Despite this change for young families, research shows a similar mass remote-worker exodus has not occurred. Hopes of a high-skilled worker exodus, reducing regional wage inequalities and boosting growth outside of a greater London area, have fallen short of reality. Research shows most remote workers have remained living proximate to ‘major employment hubs’; working from home has not significantly changed where people live. Perhaps a decisive factor of this is the unpredictability of remote working patterns during the pandemic, as many companies have since returned to fully in-person or required at least hybrid patterns. 

The environment

During the peak of the pandemic, there was an “unprecedented reduction in daily carbon dioxide emissions”, estimated to be by around 17% in early 2020 in comparison to the year before. A 2023 study suggested fully remote workers “produce less than half the greenhouse gas emissions of office workers”. The 54% reduction was caused by the reduced office energy use combined with reduced travel emissions from the daily commute.  

Working from home may have changed society, but not necessarily for the better

As such, hybrid employment has a significantly smaller impact on emissions. The study found that a single remote day per week reduced an individual’s emissions by a lowly 2%, while two to four days a week reduced them by up to 29%.  

Those hybrid workers who did partake in the ‘urban exodus’ into ‘low-density commuting zones’ accumulate more emissions on their new, longer commutes and greater dependency on private transport.  

Though commuting emissions are cut out by fully remote workers, research indicates they tend to travel more for non-work activities. Furthermore, home appliances are less energy efficient than their office counterparts, for example, home printers. 

As these examples show, working from home may have changed society, but not necessarily for the better. A significant amount of research remains contradictory or inconclusive, with the impacts of the pandemic continuing to evolve even five years later.