When I go into the office, I have an extra hour of my day taken from what would typically be my personal time.<p>When I work from home I can log off and immediately go for a run in the sun, especially important as the winter approaches.<p>I have a gym I can access at work, but then I'd be on a treadmill staring out the window at a parking lot and the concrete ass of a big box store.<p>Guess which one I'm picking every time. Its crazy how fast that sun starts falling when you're stuck in traffic.
It doesn't matter if I work in the office full time or part time, if my management team is made up of control freaks with a micromanaging nature that is distrustful of people "wasting company time", then my mental health is going to take a bad hit.<p>If my management team has faith in me to get the job done, provides me with clear goals I can provably meet with metrics and trusts me to manage my time wisely, my mental health is going to be great, whether I'm in the office or not.<p>Asking which is better, WFH, hybrid or in office, seems to me too simplistic. A lot of depends on which type of work a person is doing and what type of management style they work under.
I can believe this. We're 100% remote company, and it's great. But, we recently had a 2 day all staff in person meeting, and even the introverts came to me afterwards and said how enjoyable it was. I think what's key is not trying to force things. And I know, this isn't hybrid, but it highlights the importance of seeing each other once in awhile.
Actual title of the study: The Impact of Working from Home on Mental Health: A Cross-Sectional Study of Canadian Worker’s Mental Health during the Third Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic<p>I wonder if there could be any possible confounding factors in this study?<p>I have made it a habit of disregarding any sociology or psychology studies done during the COVID pandemic as there were massive confounding factors across all of society for many people, and in my mind leads to it being anything but representative for many people. Science is about finding truth, we need to make sure we are putting sand in the corridor if we really want to have valid information.[1]<p>1. <a href="https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm</a>
I think it's important to remember that this may apply generally to a workforce, but not necessarily equally across all workers. Let's remain focused on flexibility vs prescribing things across the board.<p>It's certainly harder to have those conversations and to accommodate variation, but the result for employees and employers would be better with a little investment of time (and sometimes money) here.
I wonder what the responses would have looked like if they had asked about overall quality of live instead of just Mental Health. I personally like a hybrid environment. However, I think I've been more satisfied with life overall since being remote full time - even if I'm not as happy now with how I engage with my job.
The study finds a statistically significant correlation but that’s hard to disentangle from all the factors that make it possible for people to work remote or hybrid. It also would be interesting to see how this result varies across number of days spent in the office. My guess would be that seeing coworkers 1-2x a month would get most of whatever social benefits hybrid has if any.
Working directly with people is disastrous for my mental health. My base heart rate dropped 20 points once I started working from home. I’m not introverted, I have a rich social life and I’m usually out of the house if I’m not working. I just don’t like working directly with people.
Quite similarly, I imagine that if there were a chart sort of like like Figure 1 with "mental health" on the y-axis but having "total work hours per week" on the x-axis, there'd be a peak somewhere above zero hours but far less than 40 hours. (Controlling for same type of work, sames ages, etc.) Anyone want to guess what the peak x-axis value would be?
I work most days in the office. By choice. That is the important part.<p>I have the flexibility to work wherever I want, no questions asked, no one keeping track. All asked, is that I get shit done and show up to our very infrequent in-person meetings.<p>Although I am quite introvert, I work in the office because I enjoy and need the social interaction.<p>Ultimately, what matters to me is not whether fully remote, hybrid or in-office is optimal. What matters is the freedom to choose what fits best with my personal life.
It all depends on what we mean by "hybrid." If it means going into the office to use Zoom, then no thank you. Remote is draining but convenient, in-person collaboration is energizing but inconvenient. Hybrid done wrong is the worst of both worlds.
These RTO discussions always miss out on this consideration: what if improved the in-office experience? What if we got rid of open office layouts and instituted cubicles, offices for teams, pairs, even individuals? This doesn't improve commutes, but at least it beats the status quo.
The HN title is editorialized and misleading. The study found an association, but no causation.<p>> We conclude that hybrid work arrangements were associated with positive self-rated mental health<p>For example, one explanation for the lower self rated mental health of fully remote workers could be because they already have poorer mental health and stay out of the office because that would be even worse.<p>The HN title should be reverted to the originally published title.<p>And even if hybrid is “better”, this study can only say that it’s better on average. Since no individual human is average, it will always be worse for some subset of the population. The whole problem is that CEOs are trying to cram every human into the same Procrustean box.
Anecdotally, I prefer hybrid work to fully remote or fully in-office. I do like getting in-person time with my team, but I don't find it effective for all types of work that I do.
Hybrid work doesn't provide any advantage compared to WFH except for avoiding commute 2-3 times a week.<p>1. You still have to live within a commutable distance of your office, which, if you have to pay rent, is expensive.<p>2. You still have to arrange for someone to accomplish the chores you're able to do at home when you WFH - like cooking, dropping and picking up your kids, etc.
> The levels “Very little of the time”, “Some of the time”, and “Most of the time” were collapsed into a single level—“Hybrid”. “Not at all” was recoded as “Do Not Work from Home” and “All of the time” was recoded as “Work from Home Only”.<p>Imagine you had a 5 increment rating system that was 1–5 stars. Then, to interpret the data, someone decided that 2-,3-, and 4-star ratings were all equivalent.
Bullshit. Mental Health is best when you can pick where to work, which is almost always remote. Commute is so detrimental to mental health, especially until we'll have the so-much-promised self-driving cars.
Boiling the frog. Y'all will return to offices before you know it, and say goodbye to affordable housing, raising a family, saving money and maintaining actual friendships. If possible, you'll be put into company towns - labor camps with nice decoration - so you can sleep, eat, and work onsite.