The impact of transition to a remote work format on the mental health of employees

Abstract

The subject of employee mental well-being has recently been discussed in the Russian corporate world and now it is a hot topic. According to the survey results, most domestic companies consider the problem of employee burnout to be important and recognize its negative impact on the staff, while over half are reluctant to do anything about it. However, for those companies that started thinking about implementing employee psychological wellness programs before 2019, the pandemic accelerated the process. The purpose of our study is to identify the causal relationship between the shift to remote working in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic and the mental state of workers. In-depth interviews with HR managers of the Russian branches of six large international companies and econometric analysis were used in this work. The research reveals that the abrupt shift to work from home (WFH) had a negative impact on employee mental state, which forced the companies to promptly implement new measures to support their workers. Over time, the staff was able to adapt to the new environment, and the opposite effect was observed: during the subsequent waves, those who were at WFH felt more psychologically stable compared to those transferred to a remote format later.