Proponents of working from home like to tout benefits such as increased productivity and better work-life balance, but research suggests remote work could harbour a dark side, too.

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Some people risk feeling more lonely, anxious and restless while working remotely, and may even have trouble staying motivated, according to recently published research by Carleton University. The study’s authors call the confluence of negative symptoms “home fever,” similar to cabin fever when people become cranky and ill at ease after being stuck inside for long periods of time.

“If you start teleworking, and you develop bad habits, there’s a challenge of cabin fever for you because you’re isolated to your home,” Farzam Sepanta, a researcher at Carleton University and one of the authors of the study, said. “You might not have the level of social interaction that you want.”

The study focused on a small number of remote workers who moved at least 20 kilometres away from their homes during the first two years of the pandemic. The move allowed many to purchase bigger houses with office space and better access to nature, but it came at the expense of social interaction because they left their co-workers behind, not to mention family and friends. Some study participants said they missed the spontaneous conversations they’d once had with colleagues in an office environment, and others commented they felt out of the loop.

As working from home persists, the research highlights the importance of developing healthy routines and strategies to shore up well-being, especially for those forced to make a move outside the city due to the continuing housing affordability crisis.

Isolation and loneliness have long been flagged as negative side-effects of remote work. Studies show that people who work from home often feel disconnected from colleagues and their workplaces. At the height of the pandemic, when many more employees were working from home full time, isolation levels soared, peaking in January 2021, according to Telus Corp.’s monthly mental health index. Feelings of isolation have improved somewhat in the years since, but remain strained as of October 2023, the latest reading said.

Full-time remote workers aren’t the only ones suffering. More than half of hybrid employees reported feeling lonelier after adopting such a schedule, a Microsoft Corp. study from 2022 said, while 59 per cent said their friendships at work had decreased.

One way to counter some of those negative consequences is to force yourself to take breaks, ideally away from your home office, Sepanta said. “(Don’t) just sit behind your laptop or your computer for eight hours and just work, work, work,” he said. “You need to go for a walk. You need to have your social interaction. You need to do things that make you not be confined to your home.”

Taking breaks has proven to be a good habit to adopt if workers want to stay focused and productive. A break helps people create better work, it can go a long way toward easing anxiety and stress, and it may even prevent burnout, studies show.

“Pausing work throughout the day can improve well-being and also help with getting more work done,” researchers Zhanna Lyubykh and Duygu Biricik Gulseren said in the Harvard Business Review. “Counter to the popular narrative of working long work hours, our research suggests that taking breaks within work hours not only does not detract from performance, but can help boost it.”

Employees don’t need to take long breaks to see the benefits, either. But getting up and away from their desks — ideally outside — is key. The most rejuvenating breaks involve taking a walk or doing some other kind of physical activity, the researchers said. Scrolling through a phone and looking at social media isn’t going to cut it.

Breaks often occur more naturally in an office environment, where it’s easier to grab a coffee with a co-worker or have a conversation in the hallway. Some companies, aware of the productivity gains from employees taking some downtime, offer spaces specifically designed for rest during the workday. Bosses may want to encourage their remote-working employees to incorporate breaks throughout the day, mirroring those in an office environment. “The employer can incentivize some of those things to push and give a productivity boost when (employees) are working from home,” Carleton’s Sepanta said.

Of course, not everyone who works from home has negative experiences. Participants in the Carleton study also reported many benefits, such as time saved commuting, which in turn allowed them to get healthier by cooking at home or being more physically active. Most also said the quality and quantity of their work improved, and many developed specific routines to ensure those improvements would continue.

It’s those kinds of proactive habits and routines that anyone who works outside the office needs to be paying close attention to if they want to be successful, Sepanta said. “The most important thing is that whether it is through incentives or awareness … if you start to telework, you need to be conscious about it to develop sustainable and healthy behaviours.”

• Email: vwells@postmedia.com

A version of this story was first published in the FP Work newsletter, a curated look at the changing world of work. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

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