Abstract
BackgroundGlobalization and technological progress have made telework arrangements such as telework from home (TWFH) well-established in modern economies. TWFH was rapidly and widely implemented to reduce virus spread during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, and will probably be widespread also post-pandemic. How such work arrangements affect employee health is largely unknown. Main objective of this review was to assess the evidence on the relationship between TWFH and employee health.MethodsWe conducted electronic searches in MEDLINE, Embase, Amed, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Scopus for peer-reviewed, original research with quantitative design published from January 2010 to February 2021. Our aim was to assess the evidence for associations between TWFH and health-related outcomes in employed office workers. Risk of bias in each study was evaluated by the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale and the collected body of evidence was evaluated using the the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach.ResultsWe included 14 relevant studies (22,919 participants) reporting on 28 outcomes, which were sorted into six outcome categories (general health, pain, well-being, stress, exhaustion & burnout, and satisfaction with overall life & leisure). Few studies, with many having suboptimal designs and/or other methodological issues, investigating a limited number of outcomes, resulted in the body of evidence for the detected outcome categories being GRADED either as low or very low.ConclusionsThe consisting evidence on the relationship between TWFH and employee health is scarce. The non-existence of studies on many relevant and important health outcomes indicates a vast knowledge gap that is crucial to fill when determining how to implement TWFH in the future working life.Systematic review registration numberPROSPERO registration ID # CRD42021233796.
Highlights
Globalization and technological progress have made telework arrangements such as telework from home (TWFH) well-established in modern economies
Telework is a subcategory of the broader concept remote work, with the additional distinction that telecommunication technology is used to replace the physical commute to work [3]
To increase relevance and limit heterogeneity in type of telework in this review, we exclusively investigate teleworkers that are teleworking from home (TWFH) [3]
Summary
Globalization and technological progress have made telework arrangements such as telework from home (TWFH) well-established in modern economies. TWFH was rapidly and widely implemented to reduce virus spread during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, and will probably be widespread post-pandemic. Digitalization, and technological progress the international working life has gone through remarkable transitions during the previous decades. This transition has changed both the content of work and how it is organized and carried out [1]. As a result of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic that hit the world fully in 2020, these types of work arrangements were rapidly and widely implemented to reduce virus spread. An important question is how this affects the employee, considering the possibility that systems and work arrangements introduced as a result of the COVID-19 will to some degree remain part of future working life
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