3w ago

They’ve Observed Teleworking for Four Years and Reached One Clear Conclusion: “Working From Home Makes Us Happier”

indiandefencereview.com They’ve Observed Teleworking for Four Years and Reached One Clear Conclusion: “Working From Home Makes Us Happier”

After four years of watching remote work in action, researchers uncovered a surprising shift in how people feel about their jobs. The results challenge many common beliefs about working from home.

Edit: Changed to a non-plagerizing link

118 comments

Too bad that happiness is banned in the USA..
- What a silly thing to say. It's merely prohibitively expensive. I mean, reasonably priced and readily available for those that deserve it.
  
  All in a monthly subscription service.
  
  D E S E R V E
- Happiness breeds self esteem, self esteem breeds confidence, confidence breeds learning. Education, confidence, self esteem, and happiness are all antithetical to fear and obedience. We're much easier to rule if we're stressed out. Plus, the real reason for return to office is real estate value. It has nothing to do with worker morale or productivity.
- To be fair the pursuit of happiness in and of itself is an uncatchable carrot used to push the capitalist agenda. Happy moments are like sprinkles on a doughnut, few and far between. Contentment is what we should really be shooting for.
- Yea sucks, they banned compassion and kindness too

I propose that the mods should take this post down, or at least point to the original post, that cmu.fr has obviously plagiarized.
Here is what seems to be the original post: https://indiandefencereview.com/theyve-observed-teleworking-for-four-years-and-reached-one-clear-conclusion-working-from-home-makes-us-happier/
The big difference is that the original article actually points to the study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35379616/ where as the cmu.fr plagiarized version makes no reference whatsoever to the study. Just vague slop about "scientists".
That said, I think that even the original article miscaracterizes the paper. Here is the paper abstract:
Objectives: To investigate the impacts, on mental and physical health, of a mandatory shift to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design: Cross sectional, online survey.
Setting: Online survey was conducted from September 2020 to November 2020 in the general population.
Participants: Australian residents working from home for at least 2 days a week at some time in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Main outcome measures: Demographics, caring responsibilities, working from home arrangements, work-related technology, work-family interface, psychosocial and physical working conditions, and reported stress and musculoskeletal pain.
Results: 924 Australians responded to the online questionnaire. Respondents were mostly women (75.5%) based in Victoria (83.7%) and employed in the education and training and healthcare sectors. Approximately 70% of respondents worked five or more days from home, with only 60% having a dedicated workstation in an uninterrupted space. Over 70% of all respondents reported experiencing musculoskeletal pain or discomfort. Gendered differences were observed; men reported higher levels of family to work conflict (3.16±1.52 to 2.94±1.59, p=0.031), and lower levels of recognition for their work (3.75±1.03 to 3.96±1.06, p=0.004), compared with women. For women, stress (2.94±0.92 to 2.66±0.88, p<0.001) and neck/shoulder pain (4.50±2.90 to 3.51±2.84, p<0.001) were higher than men and they also reported more concerns about their job security than men (3.01±1.33 to 2.78±1.40, p=0.043).
Conclusions: Preliminary evidence from the current study suggests that working from home may impact employees' physical and mental health, and that this impact is likely to be gendered. Although further analysis is required, these data provide insights into further research opportunities needed to assist employers in optimising working from home conditions and reduce the potential negative physical and mental health impacts on their employees.
Keywords: COVID-19; mental health; risk management.
So, long story short: this article is slop, copied from another piece of slop that mischaracterized a study. Overall: meh.
- With that, survey data are some of the poorest quality data.
- And that study is based on surveys... Literally the lowest possible quality information metric.
- Hey @cm0002@lemmy.world want to show a post your way - confirm receipt if ya ‘round?
  Always appreciate your posts!
  
  Thanks, I missed the above reply, this was a crosspost, so I've broken that crosspost to change the link to something not plagiarized

- Someone has to provide proof for the answers to obvious questions, if for no other reason than to short circuit the "SoUrCe?" clowns.
  
  Exactly. It's never a bad thing to have hard data on what we think is obvious.
  Especially since it's not uncommon for what's 'obvious' to be wrong.

It's also nice eating out of your own fridge, using your own toilet, and everything else.
- Bidet, and that’s all I’ll say
  
  Agreed, thanks COVID(I guess?)
  
  A moist towelette, that's all you'll get
- from a “managing people” standpoint it’s a little easier (at least in my field) too, because it becomes obvious when someone’s product is shit if I’m paying attention
  also i really like shitting at home
- I could tolerate going in to the office if I had my own bathroom.

I both agree and disagree with the conclusions in the title....
I agree that for many people, they're happier, and likely more productive, working from home.
I would also agree that for many different people, working from an office makes them happier/more productive.
It entirely depends on the job, who you are, and the work culture. Some places are toxic and working from home to get away from it is helpful for job satisfaction. I've known people who simply focus better when they're at the office since they have a lot of distractions at home. I know for me, the opposite is true. at home, I'm in control and can limit exposure to distractions, and I can be more productive, more comfortable and overall less unhappy with my job.
IMO, this discussion is less about what companies want, whether work from home or hybrid, or in office .... The main conclusion that we should be driving home is that different people need different environments to do their best work, and be happiest with their particular job. To put it simply: workers need to be able to choose.
Until we're at the stage where employers care less about how, and where you do the work, and they care more about the work getting done.... We're going to keep going back and forth on this.
I like to work from home. That's me.
I know people who prefer to work from an office. There's plenty of people who feel they work best from the office.
There's plenty of people that need to mix between home and office work.
Bluntly: as long as you can do the work from where you're working, and how you're working, the rest should be flexible. We're (presumably) adults and professionals. If we're given work and we're being paid to do the work, then we will do the work. We don't need to be constantly supervised by middle management like toddlers.
- I am more productive and less depressed working from site and if i work too much from home I get depressed and adhd kicks in and paralizes me.
  I don't see how it benefits everyone not to allow people to work from home at the same time.
  
  This is me too. I love my home. I’ve lived here a long time and have made this my ideal little place on the planet.
  I can be ridiculously hyperfocused and productive on my personal hobby projects at home. However, I cannot get jack shit done for work. I still like to work from home fairly often, but I go into the office on a regular basis. Fortunately, I live close to the office.
- I like to work from home. That’s me.
  And there is, as it turns out, a lot of people like that. Doesn't actually mean everyone is like that. But it does mean that being given this option, we, as humanity and as workers, are happier.
  Your reply reminds me that "I'm not pro-life or pro-choice, I just want people to be able to chose do they want to have an abortion or not".
  
  That quote is funny because the statement is clearly indicating that they are pro-choice.
  In business though, workers are not often given a choice. You either work from the office, work x days in office and y days from home (hybrid), or only work from home.
  90% of the employers that I am aware of, give one of these, maybe two (usually in office and hybrid) as options; usually only one option (in office). A few wfh companies I've worked for do all wfh, which is great for me, but anyone who wants to work from an office, can't.
  By giving workers a real choice, you open the company up to a much larger pool of people who are willing/able to do the job. If they're local to an office and want to be in office, cool, set it up. If they're not but they prefer wfh, cool, set it up.
  In my experience nearly zero employers provide flexible work options. It's usually one of the three, and if you're lucky, two of the three. It is exceedingly rare to be given all three choices.
- Add to this that your preference may change as your life does. Lifestage makes a big difference.
- Tl:dr "Nah-uh, not me."

Just gaining back all the commute time everyday is such a huge bonus for me. Nothing at an office can compare to that alone. And I get to add in a ton of other nice bonuses from being at home.
- It may seem silly, but aside from commuting time the biggest advantage for me was being able to use my own bathroom. No bidets in the office washroom!

A hard truth is that if you see an executive pushing return to office, you know one of two things about them. One of the following is true.
They are terrible at finance and don't understand the sunk-cost fallacy. They have to keep using that building they bought; they've spent so much on it and simply can't bring themselves to sell it.
They're a sexual molester. They're someone that uses the power of their position to coerce sex out of their employees. Fucking their employees is their primary motivation for not retiring early right now. You can't coerce your secretary to give you a blowjob over Zoom.
That's really it. They're either bad at business or they're a sexual predator. If you see an executive pushing return to office, be sure to ask them which one of these they are. Because they're definitely one or the other.
- Tradition.
  Belief that work-from-home is less efficient.
  
  So
  They're morons and terrible at business.
  
  Those are both covered under 'bad at business'.
- Honestly I think your first point is just a subset of something larger and even more basic - "we've always done it this way. Change is scawwy. Different bad. Are you implying I was wrong before?" Etc.

Well, it makes most of us happier. There was a minority of people who were very unhappy about remote working and who were eager for everyone to be forced back into the office. Not me, but there were some people.
- It was managers, especially middle-managers. And if they are not happy, no one can be happy. Too bad middle-managers are always unhappy.
- I must say I am happiest with hybrid. As someone living alone I start to chew the furniture with my work happening in the same space as my leisure. I do love the flexibility, the fact that I can literally just make lunch and eat it rather than dealing with a wet lunchbox sandwich. But I do like to see other people, and an entirely remote lifestyle makes me go a little crazy
  
  Respectable, I'm the opposite, whenever in at the office I feel like I'm clawing at the walls to get out as quickly as possible, the sweat, the noise, the people, it's just not my thing, at home I live alone in a decently sized apartment in a non-major city and it feels so cash compared to rammed trains and buses commuting for hours and hours like the last chopper out of Saigon.

Of course it does!
\ When I get a complaint email I can yell at Myles to go fuck himself with a toilet brush, all whole sitting in my favourite chair and Myles will still wish me a good evening at the end of the work day.
\ What's not to like?

Little do they know that worker happiness is considered the enemy of productivity.* Plus, it's harder to micromanage them when they're at home.
*By employers, not the workers, obviously.
- I don't get this.
  When I was unhappy at my last job I was way less productive.
  Now I'm enjoying my new job and spend my time solving real technical problems and building real projects.
  I was considering taking a pay cut just to leave my last job it had gotten so toxic. You can pay employees less if they're otherwise satisfied.
  
  It doesn't make sense, but here we are. We are all individuals with our own strengths and weaknesses, yet workers are considered fungible. If you are dissatisfied and quit, you'll just be replaced by someone else.

Truth. I am so happy where I'm at that I am not looking for a new job with better pay because I love WFH so much. I know here I will always WFH.
Don't need to put on makeup, don't need to put together outfits for the week, don't need to drive anywhere. I wake up thirty minutes before I clock in.
Love it!
- Here's the weird thing.
  I've been telecommuting for 23 years. I've never been able to just roll outta bed and put in a full day. If it's scheduled then I'm showered and dressed and ready to go; just in shorts and a tee vs khakis and a fucking polo.
  The only indulgence is on a o5oo wakeup I'm not shaving lest I lose an eyebrow or an ear. Even in our basic training it was o520.
  But yeah, no smelly sweatpants for me.
  
  Same here. I get ready to work in the same way as I would step into my car to go to the office.
- What the hell, are you me? The song referenced in your username is my alarm that wakes me up a half hour before my WFH job.

Yes, but you have to consider the poor CEO's and middle managers. They need to be able to strut around an office full of people and feel important. Plus there's all that office space they leased for the next 30 years at a discount that they need to fill with workers to justify the expense!!
It cruel to only consider the happiness of the slave class while ignoring the plight of the ruling class. Don't you people know that?!?!?
- During the pandemic our office was inspected and structurally condemned, so we literally have nowhere to go back to, the building is now a car park. It's great.
  I wholeheartedly recommend black mould and a leaky roof to anyone that doesn't want to go back, it might be hard to arrange but it definitely works.

We've had this capacity for several decades now, and it seems ridiculous that our culture has not fully embraced it with open arms. If that's not a sign that "we the people" aren't running the show, I don't know what is. Freedom my ass.
- Due to how isolating our culture and urban planning has become, a lot of people have started using their work as a replacement for their social life. Without it they realize just how caged they are under this system, so they refuse it. They think being given more free time and the ability to do work from the comfort of their own home is a bad thing because it takes away their social outlet.
  
  People have to do what's best for them. If they need to commute to a job to have a social life, let them. This is absolutely not a reason to force other people to do it.
- I know a few boomers who are against it. They think that online work is not real work and that people who work remote are lazy bums who should get a "real job". They're the same type of people who went insane during the lockdowns instead of enjoying the free vacation.
  
  Boomer here, software developer, I started fighting the telecommuting battle with managers in the early 90s. They'd say, "We need you here." I'd ask, "Why? I can dial in. You have contractors in India you've never even met, and that works out fine." "That's different." "How?" They never could come up with valid reasons why we really needed to physically be there, and would generally shut down the conversation with like, "Well, I can see we don't agree on this." Correct, and 30 years later they're still making the same ludicrous arguments.
  
  Yeah my boomer dad (materials scientist in the civilian nuclear sector) disagrees. He's been working from home (and from vacations sometimes...) at least a few days a week for quite a while now, and his old boss was apparently saying that they were going to need to hire 3 people to replace him when he eventually retires.
  FWIW I also know some elder millennials who are against it, but I've seen how they run their business and let's just say I wouldn't take advice from them.
- As someone who worked from home for almost a decade before being pulled into the office, I regularly got flack from my peers for it as well as older boomer types. IME, people who are forced into the office frequently feel a sense of “fairness” where they want everyone else to come in as well.
  “If I have to be miserable, you should too”

That's why they want to put a stop to it. You're not allowed to be happy.

Working from home has been the default for the last few millenia. Who would have thought that it could make people happier?

The very fact that it is something that the workers want
Is WHY Employers want to halt it.
Too many Employers believe that anything the workers want is necessarily bad for Businesses ... BECAUSE the workers want it

how will landlords who own all the buildings in business districts get paid, then? do you want their properties to stay empty? do you just want them to starve?
- Just an FYI, most commercial real estate is owned by massive corporations because they're the only ones with enough money to build and own skyscrapers. Most mom and pop landlords are residential and they own 4 units or less. It's very rare for an average, even a wealthy average person to own more than a couple of commercial properties that they rent out. Corporate landlords are very much a big reason why WFH isn't the standard.

Even better is if we all got a monthly allowance and not have to work full time. 😆
- Naive to think that those who set the prices won't just adjust the baseline to absorb the entirety of your monthly allowance.
  Better to just establish a system of community property that equitably shares and distributes necessities and the means of producing goods or providing services without the need to satisfy an arbitrary profit incentive of some private individual who will put their greed over your needs out of a sense of entitlement gained from their private ownership over such means.

No shit.

The return to office mandate is such an annoyance. I hope companies who did it suffer because of it.
- One of the top tech companies in my country mandated a return to office because the boss couldn't stand that people were working from Bali instead of chatting with him at the office coffee machines in the cold Estonian winter.
  Friend who works there says it's up to the team leads and few want to enforce it and risk losing people. But the CEO got his article in the newspapers saying software engineers are all lazy entitled pieces of shit, which was his real goal. He hates paying people, but the company only gets top talent because of their salaries. Nobody goes there for "innovation" anymore now that it's an established company.

Haha! Now if only the point of work was to make you happy! If research showed it made your boss wealthier then everyone would be WFH tomorrow!
- It DOES make them wealthier. Since productivity isn't lost while employees WFH, that means that they get the same results while saving money from having costs associated with office space like rent, utilities, furnishing, and maintenance. The reason why they don't do it is because office real estate is a business worth billions and the rich are all invested in it. They're so greedy and out of touch, they'd make up any lie to demonize WFH.
  
  It also makes employees wealthier.... Think of all the money you flush down the drain making your car move from home to the office and back again.... Just that alone is easily thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars per year, depending on your vehicle and type of fuel, efficiency, etc.
  Everyone wins except the real estate owners and their stakeholders, which, as you astutely pointed out, are the business owners. Rent is a way for them to essentially launder money into their own pockets. They legitimately pay their office rent, and a chunk of that comes back to them in dividends from the land owning company.
  It's a club, and you ain't in it.
- Life, liberty, and the pursuit of making money for others, right?

Work, and society in general, isn't meant to make us happier.
- It fuckin should be. We are all here for a blink of an eye on a spinning rock next to uncontrollable chaos. Let us enjoy the ride and quit squabbling over which idol is right or who has the most manufactured wealth.
  
  Correct. I am merely relaying my observations.
- Right, remember that whole line of the American dream? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of quarterly profits.
  Fuck you.
  
  Fuck me? I didn't invent this...
  I've observed that work seems to be a system to transfer money from millionaires to billionaires through the working stiff's paycheck.

Plagiarizing. It's spelled plagiarizing.
- And yet we all still understood it somehow
  
  eauquay

This is what bombing those buildings in Fight Club was truly about!

Must be banned!!!!!!! How dare Americans have a tiny bit of happiness. We must crush this before it gets out of control.
- In Australia, at the last election, one of the policies of the party who lost was to cut WFH. They lost big time.

Not that shocking. Hell, there are millions of Americans who would kill just to work indoors. Office work is the envy of every farm and trade worker with aching feet and knees and various injuries they have to nurse while they labor. Working at home??? It’s absolute luxury.
- Office work is the envy of every farm and trade worker
  This isn't exactly true. There are, believe it or not, people who prefer to work outdoors and do heavy labor. Especially farm work. Some people aren't really suited for office work. (pun intended)
  
  A bit disingenuous to skip the part where their bodies are falling apart and they're in constant pain.
  
  Yeah you cut off half of what I said and then argued with a different statement

I thought we were social beings... With that said, ofc I would be happier with remote work only.
- Spending hours to commute to be around people you don't choose isn't necessarily a particularly social experience
- We are social, and being close to other people you know while being told to shut up and work is a bit grating. Bonus points if they also say it's because we're family and building community.
  
  Oh and also btw you're disowned from the family the moment we deem there's a slight financial upside

Maybe for most people. I start getting a little too suicidey when I spend too many days working from home.
- That sounds like you are using work as a replacement for whatever it is missing in your personal life. Nothing stopping you from going to do things outside of work hours.
  
  No, I do stuff after work. My job is just stressful as fuck and being able to move around and bs with my coworkers helps with that. When I'm WFH I'm stuck at my desk all day and that stress just piles up.
- I loved working most days until 12 or 1 in the office, coming home and refocusing on "my" part of my workday. Just enough office, not too much. Sadly now I am glued into a windowless room with a camera on me. Major dissatisfaction, huh.
  
  Yeah I actually do that at my current job. WFH the first hour or so, leave after traffic is down, work from the office until 2ish and leave before afternoon traffic starts up, then wrap things up at home while I prep to workout. That flexibility is one of the only reasons I'm not looking to move unless there's a huge raise in it for me. The job sucks otherwise.

yah, because I'm not working lol
- I work longer hours at home pretty often. At 5 I leave office to make sure my 1.25-1.5 hour drive gets me home at a decent time, and to make sure I miss the worst traffic which I feel happens between 5:30 and 6.
  At home I can just keep working, load up a game on my other monitor but keep working open too,and switch between doing some minor game stuff and back to work. I have a game up now at 7 and wrapped up my notes quite comfortably.
  I'm also more alert at home because I sleep in more, getting about an hour more sleep.

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