There is a lot we can do to proactively ensure employers are fully informed when making decisions about the way employees work, enabling arrangements that enhance rather than deplete mental health. What research is available suggests there are also many drawbacks to working from home, particularly brought about by isolation and lack of boundaries between work and home life. However, there is little research available to help understand the impacts of imposed working-from-home requirements, particularly where working from home is an involuntary full-time arrangement. Working from home has typically been considered an employment benefit a privilege to be enjoyed for the purpose of flexibility and managing work-life balance. With social distancing requirements likely to continue for some time, organisations are looking to establish longer term working-from-home arrangements. This has provided an unprecedented opportunity to get a taste of what such an arrangement can be like on a large scale, especially for organisations that did not previously permit working from home or did not have the technological capabilities to do so.

In an effort to respond swiftly to the COVID-19 pandemic, Australian organisations have moved as many employees to working from home arrangements as operationally practical. So what of the future of work? And what should we as psychologists have to say about it? We are now questioning the way we work, with much popular opinion suggesting remote work is the way forward. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has renewed discussions about the way we work.

We can work from home song