The Perils of Working at Home

Now that we all know what WFH means-- that is, it means work from home-- we are curious, to say the least, to see whether it is good or bad for workers, to say nothing of companies.

Indications are that working from home is not a good thing. Work, such as it is, involves being a member of a team, belonging to an organization. And this requires presence. It especially requires a myriad of everyday interactions that promote mental stability and good functioning.

The Wall Street Journal has been reporting on the phenomenon, and it has done a good job of it.

A recent report begins with the simple fact that many members of Generation Z-- those born after 1997, have never worked in an office. One adds that this generation also suffers from the worst social skills.

A growing cohort of young employees have never worked from an office. They graduated during the pandemic or landed jobs just as offices began to shut down. And many of them—especially Generation Z—imagine they may never work in an office, as remote work becomes the default for many businesses.

Naturally, Gen Zers think that they are happy working from home. And  yet, many of them report feeling depressed and anxious, from the simple fact of being disconnected. The Journal lists what they are losing by working from home:

In general, they are OK with that: Many of them like being remote and want to be able to work that way. But there are drawbacks. Surveys show that young remote workers also feel unmoored and anxious. And researchers argue that the young workers may harm their personal and professional lives in the future by missing office work and the traditional experiences that prior generations took for granted: learning from older colleagues, schmoozing with bosses, settling into the rhythms of an office workday—or even just being face to face with others. It is new territory, and the experience is likely to shape these workers in lasting ways.

Think about it, face to face contact. Looking someone in the eye, communicating via gestures and facial expressions-- these are essential to making real connections. You cannot do it on line and you certainly cannot do it via text message or email or any other form of writing. 

So, Gen Z seems to be suffering psychological damage for their addiction to screens. The problem is disconnection and loneliness. We are not dealing with the kind of loneliness that can be cured by falling in love. We are dealing with the loneliness that befalls those who feel like they do not belong to any constituted social group.

Working from home can make anyone lonely and anxious, but experts say these effects are more pronounced for Gen Zers—who have spent a lot of time on screens from the start. “This is the cohort with the least amount of person-to-person interaction while growing up,” says Dr. Nishizaki, adjunct professor at California State University, Los Angeles. “There is a link there between depression and anxiety and how we constantly compare ourselves to other people, and then we are only seeing our best selves online and on social media.”

Compounding the problem, young adulthood, from ages 18 to 29, is a particularly lonely time of life for many, with or without screens, says Jeffrey Arnett, a professor of psychology at Clark University.

It is “the time when people spend the most time alone until you get to your 70s,” says Dr. Arnett. “You may not have a romantic partner, you may not see your parents so much anymore because you probably don’t live at home, and you change residences so much that that complicates having stable friendships.”

Importantly, when you interact with your office mates on a daily basis you form connections. Not because you have been sharing intimacies-- they have no place in the workplace-- but because you each become familiar presences:

Working in an office, Dr. Arnett says, allows relationships with colleagues, from friendships to mentorships, to form more naturally.

That means young remote workers may miss out not only on professional relationships but also on friends and potential romantic partners, says Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management.

“There’s something that happens when a group of us, say, ‘Hey, after work on Friday, we’re all going to X bar,’ and you go with a group, and there’s that dynamic,” he says.

And, of course, we want to know whether working from home has a cost in terms of efficiency and effectiveness:

The potential problems aren’t just personal ones, of course. Working remotely presents Gen Z with significant challenges on the job.

Young workers often express concerns about the ability to build a professional network, says Mr. Taylor. This is a problem for any remote worker—but a bigger one for younger people who haven’t established themselves professionally.

“One day, one of their classmates is going to be the CEO of something or the board member of some company, and you won’t have that real authentic relationship with him or her,” says Mr. Taylor.

Remote work may also lead to career crises. Because young millennial and Gen Z workers generally have less experience and less power at work than other age groups, they often worry about whether they are on the right track. They are more likely to be affected by feeling out of the loop, say Drs. Nishizaki and DellaNeve.

Without consistent feedback, they can more easily start to wonder things like, “ ‘Is my boss mad at me? Am I doing OK?’ ” says Dr. Nishizaki. They are even more vulnerable to impostor syndrome, a psychological phenomenon that makes people doubt their hard-won success or worry about being exposed as a fraud.

One understands that Gen Z is especially apt to suffer from imposter syndrome. After all, the current mania for diversity, inclusion and equity suggests that people are being hired for their genetic makeup, not for their skills and competence. This produces the assumption that certain members of certain groups have not been hired for merit.

And that is not all:

The concern young workers share about being forgotten isn’t unfounded, says Mr. Taylor of the Society for Human Resource Management. The organization conducted a survey in 2021 that revealed 42% of supervisors say they sometimes forget about remote workers when assigning tasks.

“If I’m the supervisor and I have a really juicy assignment, I give it to the person who I just passed in the hallway, because this concept of out of sight, out of mind applies in human nature,” says Mr. Taylor. “So you are missing out on some key opportunities to showcase your talent.”

Remote workers also may be more vulnerable to misunderstandings and bad feelings at work, in part because they are not able to form strong relationships or to build on existing relationships with people they have met. “In the absence of those relationships and in the absence of good quality communication, I think there’s a greater tendency for there to be mistrust, and it’s very hard to kind of work through those issues over a messaging platform or even over a telephone call,” says psychiatrist Grant Brenner, who coaches clients on subjects including the workplace.

Presence brings benefits, for the individual and for the group. When it is absent, workers feel less loyalty to their company. This makes them more likely to want to look for other jobs.

Without a sense of connection and belonging, they are less likely to feel attached to their employers, she says. “They are going to be quick to want to leave if they don’t feel fully connected and if they don’t like the culture they see.” More than half of Americans planned to look for a new job within the year, according to a Bankrate survey of more than 2,000 workers in July 2021. Among those surveyed, twice as many Gen Z workers as baby boomers and Gen X workers said they were likely to start the search.

All told, working from home seems to be a losing proposition, for everyone involved.