Work Performance, Mood and Sleep Alterations in Home Office Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Chiara Costa,Carmen Vitello,Carmela Mento,Concettina Fenga,Michele Teodoro,Sebastiano Italia,Federica Giambò

doi:10.3390/ijerph19041990

Chiara Costa, Carmen Vitello + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19041990

Copy DOI

Abstract

The sudden burst of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the work environment in favor of remote working, affecting the perception of work quality, satisfaction and performance. This crisis has also influenced workers’ mood, sleep quality and general perception of everyday life. Our main purpose in this study was to give empirical contributions about home office workers experiencing remote working during the pandemic by assessing mood spectrum variations, sleep disturbances and the general impact of pandemic in everyday life. This cross-sectional study was performed between November and December 2020 through an online questionnaire. Participants were office workers performing remote work from workstations settled at home. The questionnaire investigated sociodemographic characteristics, health factors, perception of remote working, mood spectrum, sleep quality and pandemic context perception. The sample consisted of 94 respondents: 63 women and 31 men; the mean age was 50.4 years. Study population showed great satisfaction for remote working performance and online services for video connections. Only one third of the participants reported higher levels of irritability and loneliness and 16% of women complained of nightmares. Most of participants stated that the pandemic importantly affected daily life (85.1%). Half of female subjects with children <18 years stated that children’s age influenced their work performance. Since the pandemic is still an ongoing issue, the lesson learnt is that local government actions are needed to assist home office workers through tailored programs to support families. Given the central role of women in childcare, female workers would mainly benefit from social support accordingly to their parental tasks and remote work organization.

Highlights

The sudden burst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent preventive measures, such as quarantine, social isolation, partial or total lockdown, have dramatically transformed everyday life, with a massive impact on physical, mental, social, and financial welfare of the population [1] but they have changed the work environment, in favor of remote work organization
1.32 for to we considered the possibility to find a correlation between the outtime than before spent on the time internet than before demonstrated spent on to the be internet a predictor demonstrated of worse wo to we considered the possibility to find a correlation between the outthat the pandemic would be affecting their everyday life
0.24), asleep more

Summary

Introduction

The sudden burst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent preventive measures, such as quarantine, social isolation, partial or total lockdown, have dramatically transformed everyday life, with a massive impact on physical, mental, social, and financial welfare of the population [1] but they have changed the work environment, in favor of remote work organization. The perception of work quality, satisfaction and performance were all affected [2]. The output obtained by entering the search keywords “remote work” in the main databases showed an exponential increase in the number of scientific surveys in the years 2019–2021. The revolutionary changes faced by people, communities and governments during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak have totally restructured work organizations [1,2].

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion