Back to the Office!

In the world of psycho research the question of working from home has become more than salient. More than a few corporations have insisted that their staff work from the office.

More than a few workers, especially the young and the defective, refuse to do so.

One Elon Musk has told his workers that if they do not work from the office, they will lose their jobs. 

Psychologists have studied the issue, generally concluding that working from home is bad for companies and for people.

Recently, Malcolm Gladwell weighed in on the topic, advising people to return to their offices. 

The Daily Mail, of all places, has offered a comprehensive look at the research. It opens its article with Gladwell’s words:

Speaking on the podcast Diary Of A CEO last week, the author of The Tipping Point and Outliers said: ‘It’s very hard to feel necessary when you’re physically disconnected,’ adding that ‘as we face the battle that all organisations are facing now in getting people back into the office, it’s really hard to explain this core psychological truth, which is that we want to have a feeling of belonging and to feel necessary.’

He added: ‘It’s not in your best interest to work at home. I know it’s a hassle to come to the office, but if you’re just sitting in your pyjamas in your bedroom… what have you reduced your life to?’

As you know, the minute Gladwell offered this advice, an army of detractors rose up to declare that he himself normally works from home. They consider this a sign of hypocrisy, and consider it to have proved their point. Others have rejected Gladwell because he traffics in pop psychology and sells too many books.

Unfortunately, comparing the work of a writer or any other creative person to that of someone who belongs to a work group is not useful. The two do not compare.

And, besides, if I may, Gladwell writes better than most of the clowns who are criticizing him. And his insights into matters psychological are usually more profound and more useful than are theirs. So, hats off to Malcolm Gladwell and Bronx cheers for his detractors.

Anyway, the evidence suggests that Gladwell is right. The Daily Mail examined the research of Britain’s psycho experts and offered this conclusion:

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, some of Britain’s psychology experts have also raised concerns about what has become, for many, the new normal.

They warn that a ‘starvation of social interaction’, over-use of screens and constant distractions could be having a profound impact on mental wellbeing.

‘Flexible working, a few days at home here and there, is a good thing for many people, but I am increasingly worried about businesses that say there is no longer an office to go to,’ says GP Dr Clare Gerada, president of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

‘Moments of interaction are crucial for wellbeing – without them, you’ll see more stress and more anxiety because it is very difficult to set boundaries between work and home.’

Even if you are communicating via the screen, human beings are more than their images. The inability to interact, the sense of being isolated and alone, damages one’s mental health and compromises one’s ability to do one’s job.

The Daily Mail continues:

Meanwhile, clinical neuropsychologist Katharine James says: ‘We need firms to tackle it head on now, to divert a future mental health crisis. I am particularly worried about millennials, who are most affected by work-related isolation and also suffer anxiety and depression more than any other age group.’

Millennials have enough problems to begin with. Cutting them off from social contact cannot help them.

As it happens, our neighbors across the pond have embraced remote work more enthusiastically than have other Europeans:

Britons have taken to home working with more enthusiasm than most of our European neighbours. A global poll published in February showed the UK has the highest number of remote working days per week in all of Europe, with fewer than 40 per cent of major firms requiring workers to be office-based for at least three days a week. In some ways, it is in their interest. 

Naturally, companies are thinking of reducing their office rent, though this might very well produce larger problems-- as in, what will anyone do with the empty office space. And what about the mortgages?:

Large companies are expected to save about £55 million per year by cutting back on bricks-and-mortar costs if they adopt home working.

So, Brits are doing more work from home and are spending more time consulting with mental health professionals.

Obviously, there are many possible causes for this, but still, remote work and social isolation are notably bad for one’s mental health:

But at the same time, referrals to mental health specialists have reached record highs, with ten million Britons predicted to develop conditions such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders in the aftermath of the pandemic.

No mental health expert would say this explosion in psychological distress is down to a single factor. All mental illness is complex, often developing as a result of a number of triggers, alongside genetic predisposition.

But they are unequivocal that WFH has worsened one important precursor to mental ill-health, especially in those who are vulnerable: loneliness.

Interestingly, being remote and detached, even when one can look at images of colleagues and co-workers, makes people crazy:

The number of Britons who say they are chronically lonely – feeling significantly lonely most or all of the time – has risen by a quarter since May, according to the charity Campaign To End Loneliness.

Spokesman Jenny Manchester says that despite Covid restrictions having ended a year ago, ‘we’re still seeing a rise in loneliness, partly because younger people are struggling to make connections while working from home’.

Similar consequences have been found in the United States, among journalists and physicians:

US research conducted before the pandemic found that journalists who worked remotely were 67 per cent more likely to suffer loneliness than those based in an office.

Dr Gerada, who runs a helpline for frazzled GPs struggling with mental illness, has seen this problem first-hand.

Speaking on The Mail on Sunday’s Medical Minefield podcast, she said: ‘I know of many doctors suffering due to the isolation of working from home, and having no boundaries around their work.’

Dr Gerada, who initially qualified as a psychiatrist before moving into general practice 30 years ago, continued: ‘They’d log on at 7am, do a day’s work, then log off at 9pm, with no break, and it becomes demoralising.

Why should this be so?

‘You’ve got nobody to talk to about cases, and you don’t get the chatter in the coffee breaks, so it is pretty lonely.

‘There was one GP whose chair broke because she sat in it every day for six weeks during the pandemic, except for sleeping. It is a sort of metaphor. The chair broke, but so did her spirit.

‘If you move ten metres from your bedroom to your office, day in day out, you might expect mental health to suffer as a consequence.’

Video calls are no replacement for face-to-face interaction, research has shown.

So, video calls are an inadequate substitute for face-to-face interaction. One recalls the words from 1 Corinthians, to the effect that seeing through a glass darkly is far inferior to seeing face-to-face.

Naturally, researchers have studied the issue:

Last year, communication experts at Stanford University in the US analysed the quality of social interactions on video platform Zoom. Professor Jeremy Bailenson, of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, noted that eye contact on video calls was unnaturally ‘excessive and intense’.

Being forced to watch your on-screen image, and the lack of non-verbal communication such as hand gestures, are what make these conversations feel unnatural and unpleasant, he added.

But still, many people refuse to go back to the office:

Despite these clear psychological harms, more than half of all home workers say that they would quit if forced to go back to the office full-time, according to a poll conducted in October.

‘For a start, people don’t like feeling forced to do something,’ says Dr Kinman. ‘If we’re not being given a choice, we push back.

‘We also like routines, and once we’ve become used to something we find it very hard to break the habit.’

There is some physiological basis for this. Brain-imaging studies show that repeatedly doing the same series of activities triggers the release of chemicals related to a feeling of reward in the brain.

The workplace is often associated with negative emotions such as stress.

But, being in an office changes who you are, detaches you from the roles you play at home and focuses your mind on the requirements of the role you play in the office:

Yet being in an office environment might offer some relief from psychological distress.

‘When we go to the office, or another place that isn’t our home, we change our mindset,’ says clinical neuropsychologist Ms James. ‘Our brain puts negative emotions that develop in one environment on pause when we move to another environment. By the time we are reminded of the difficult feelings later on, they are usually less upsetting because we’ve had some separation from them.

‘This is a psychological concept called compartmentalisation, which helps us carry on despite hardships.’

Dr Gerada adds: ‘We have important boundaries between home life and work life – and it’s those boundaries where we shift our identities. For instance, I find it very strange emotionally to be doing consultations, professionally, in my own bedroom. You need to be able to get home, take off your metaphorical white coat and take on a different persona, whether that is mother, girlfriend, husband, wife, whatever.’

There may be other benefits, too. ‘One of the hallmarks of depression is a lack of motivation to do anything,’ says Dr Stella Chan, a clinical psychologist and chair of evidence-based psychological treatment at the University of Reading. ‘This leads to a vicious cycle – patients feel like a failure because they haven’t achieved anything, which makes them more miserable. But studies show that if you challenge people to do the activity they don’t want to do, they get a strong sense of achievement.

And then, in the United States, researchers at Columbia University set up an experiment. They took two groups, gave them the same task, and had one work from home while the other worked in the office.

In April, researchers from Columbia University in the US recruited 300 pairs of volunteers and asked them to come up with novel uses for a plastic object.

Half of the volunteers communicated via video call, while the other half did so in person.

BY THE end of the study, the face-to-face pairs had come up with more ideas, of better quality, and took more time to look at the product. The digital participants spent much of their time focusing heavily on the face of the other person on the screen, according to the researchers….

How do they explain this?

‘Working from home is invariably linked with online meetings, and this comes at a price,’ says Sir Simon Wessely, professor of psychological medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry.

The quality of interaction between colleagues suffers, resulting in less innovation, creativity, spontaneity and trust between workers, he adds.

Experts say the endless distractions of home life are also detrimental to productivity.

But, don’t people do better when they multi-task? Apparently not.

‘Many people think they are good at multi-tasking, but in fact studies show that very few people are,’ says Dr Kinman. 

‘Switching from one task to another is very taxing on the brain and it takes a while to regain concentration.

‘Evidence shows doing this frequently can add up to two hours to the working day.

‘People end up under-performing in all the tasks they do, which just adds to the stress.’