Strategies for Connection and Office Life

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR . Hey Shortwavers Emily Kwong here with NPR's Mental Health Correspondent Ritu Traty. Hi Ritu. Hi, Emily. It's good to see you. And we are looking directly at each other.. Exactly We're in person at NPR headquarters, but sometimes you and I do work from home. A lot of people do. A lot of people do. Remote work has quadrupled since the pandemic, to be precise . And I've been speaking with one researcher who's been looking at this and her name is Natalia Emanuel. She's an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. Studies have found that workers are willing to give up four to ten percent of their earnings in order to have the ability to work remotely. That sounds like a lot, but I'm not surprised because of the flexibility. Oh, the flexibility is huge. And I can tell you that as a parent of two little kids , I love the flexibility remote work gives me because I can pick up and drop off my kids without having to worry about getting to work on time . And the fact that I can work from home even when one of the kids is homesick, you know, makes a big . And there's also data showing that working from home increases productivity and job satisfaction , but we don't yet understand how remote work is affecting various aspects of the workplace and even ourselves our own sense of well being. Yeah. And I spoke with Nicholas Eppley, he's a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Boot School of Business , and he says he gets asked about the effects of remote work all the time. Everybody wants to know how is that changing things ? And usually the answer is we can't really tell . But a recent study published in the journal of Science does give us some insight into the effects of remote work on our sense of well being. Unfortunately, it suggests that despite all the advantages of remote work, you know, the flexibility , the productivity , working from home isn't creating a happier workforce. In fact, it's making workers more isolated and unhappy . Today on the show, some new science to answer a very difficult question, what does working from home do our health and our sense of well being? I'm Emily Kwang. I'm Reith erji, and you're listening to Shortwave from NPR . Okay, so Rutu, just to be clear, this is only one study we're talking about today. I know it was in a very prestigious journal. Science is like one of the big ones. Exactly . Yes. We are talking about one recent study which was interestingly titled Home Alone. I wonder what Macaulay Calkin thinks about this . Anyway, it looked at a ton of data on US workers to explore whether there was any link between remote work workers' mental health. All right, let's dig into the paper. How did researchers even go about answering this question? So the researchers used data from five large surveys of American workers that together gave them a ton of information about a whole lot of things about the kinds of jobs people are in, workers' daily lives, their overall health and well being . And the researchers grouped workers two groups based on the kind of jobs they are in. One group was in what they called remotable jobs , such as software engineering, marketing , you know, maybe journalism was in there as well . The second group was in what they call non remoteable jobs like surgery and mechanical engineering. Okay, so the study defined non remotable jobs as those that require someone to go someplace to work. Like my cousin who makes helicopter parts. He's working at a big piece of equipment every day. Exactly. So what did they find? What they found firstly was that those in remotable jobs were a lot more socially isolated than those going to work in person . Here's a study author Natal Eiammanuel again . They've seen a fifty eight percent increase in hours alone and then a seventy two percent increase in the chance of spending a whole day with just no human contact . Not even a wave to a barista , not, you know, somebody also checking for the ripeness of the avocados at the grocery store, just no human contact at all. And you know, those who live alone had the highest rise in social isolation. They had an eighty three percent increase in chances of spending their days with zero social contact. Wow. Natalya and her colleagues also found that workers in remotable jobs have seen an increase in symptoms of mental distress or anxiety and depression over the past few years. This shows up in self reports, in seeing a mental healthcare professional, in using mental health prescription medications . And so really across the board we're seeing disproportionate shift toward greater mental distress among people in remoteable occupations relative to people in non remotable occupations. That's interesting, but wouldn't also working from home give you more flexibility to see a therapist or get mental health care? How do we know that the rise in mental healthcare visits and prescriptions isn't just because of that? That's a great question, Emily. By that logic , you should also see a rise in people visiting their doctors too, right? Oh fair. And that's something that the authors did look into because they wanted to make sure that this wasn't sort of a f alse signal that they were getting. And they found that there was no increase in visits to physical healthcare providers. That is fascinating. How do we know these things are causally linked that one leads to another . This study does not prove causation. What it does is show a very strong link . Now there have been other studies looking into this connection between work location and mental health , one study found that workers who exclusively work remotely have a slightly higher risk of anxiety compared to those who work in a hybrid setting. And another study found that remote workers who have more frequent phone calls with friends, family, caregivers who are at a lower risk of anxiety and depression than remote workers who have such calls less than once a week. Call your grandma everybody . Exactly , or your neighbor. So you're getting the signal from other studies too that the social isolation aspect of working remotely is having an impact on people's mental he alth. And by the way , there's just a wealth of research that show us that social isolation , loneliness is bad for our mental health . And in the long run our physical health too . You know, I talked about this with Nick Etley, who we heard from earlier. He wasn't involved in the new study, but has spent years researching social connection and health. Being alone compromise your immune system functioning, your cardiovascular system functioning, and it's correlated with mortality, even people who live alone die sooner. And as I've reported before, one of the biggest predictors of health and well being is the quality and even the variety of our social relationships. Social connections don't just boost our mood, they also improve our overall health. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. We are such a social species . We've evolved to connect with each other. Absolutely, yeah. So if social connections are this central to our well being , why do people, if given the choice, I don't want to speak for all people, but it does seem like there's such an appetite to work from home. Yeah, there is. So what's that about? If it's also kind of hurting people? Well , let's not either or right. There are genuine advantages to working remotely and it's easy for people to know and prioritize those advantages . And we talked about some of this earlier , right? People are very attuned to these sort of short run , very salient things like not having to do their commute . However, as Natalia and Nick pointed out to me , it's much harder for people to understand and estimate the longer term impacts of missed social connections from not going into work. It's a slow motion effect in many ways, right? It feels a little better in the moment, but it's hard to anticipate a month, a year, two years from now , friends you'll have that you don't have now. Conversations you've had that are meaningful that you haven't had now. This sounds exactly like how people talk about exercise They don't have time, the equipment, it's hard , I'm out of shape, but over time, long term impact shows muscle loss, bone density is being impacted. I mean the longer term calculation can be hard to prioritize in the moment . Yeah. When you're just tired and you don't feel like calling up somebody. It's very human, you know, even that reaction. Yeah. And Emily, I have to mention one other reason why people play down the value of their social interactions. It's because our brains lie to us when it comes to judging ourselves in social situations. That's what psychologist Jillian Sandstrom told me. This phenomenon where two people who meet for the first time afterwards tend to think that they liked the person they talked to, but the person they talked to didn't really like them. Jillian's at the University of Sussex and she studies how talking to strangers and acquaintances affects our mood. So that's us feeling like , you know, oh I didn't tell that story very well . You know, I should have said this, I shouldn't have said that. So we have this, you know, this voice that's telling us that we didn't do a good job. And so Jillian says that for people who are spending the bulk of their days alone, being isolated , that negative voice in their heads is the one that becomes more prominent, telling them that they aren't great at social interactions. If you're not seeing other people, you're not getting that sense that people care about me. I matter to people, that maybe they help you feel like you're not the only one going through this. For people who don't have offices to visit and don't have a coworking space. What can they do to combat these negative side effects of the social isolation that comes with working from home? Well, so I asked Jillian exactly that question. She recommends being more intentional and seeking daily human interactions . She says she works from home herself . And so for her, that means I leave the house every day. I go for a walk, I see my neighbors, I pet some dogs , you know, I have my activities that I do. I play tennis. I have hobbies that mean that I see other people. Yeah. So it's about like planning for social connection. What do you think all this means for return to office mandates . There's a lot of push even at NPR to get our newsroom back into the office more regularly. So I'll just paraphrase what Nick Appley said to me. He said, These results as clear of a link as it chose to poor mental health does not mean that workplaces require every worker to come back . Because remember , there are clear advantages, right? Especially to certain vulnerable groups, like caregivers. I mentioned I'm a parent with two little kids. Yeah . Yeah. And then there are many people who are caring for their kids and elderly parents. So more responsib ilities. It certainly allows more caregivers to be in the workforce period. Absolutely a policy like that. Absolutely. I've also heard from a couple of neurodivergent individuals who say that working from home makes them less anxious because it takes away the stress and anxiety of trying to fit into a neurotypical workplace. But for companies who do want people to return to the office , Nick Eppley says they need to make the office attractive. I love this twist. What they're providing that's rewarding at work is social interaction, social connection. But you got' tove coordinate that make sure that everybody is in on the days when everybody's in. Honestly, NPR has one of the biggest attractants to getting people into the office possible, which is the tiniest concerts. The fact that you and I can go up to the fourth floor and see a concert that will be posted later on YouTube is like ridiculous. You're right, it is a great privilege. And the fact that you can have those moments of connection with your coworkers makes work feel less transactional and more human. Those moments of human connection are what keeps us going. They're what make us want to work . They bring new information and make us work better. And so sacrificing them adds up to something bigger than it seems, I think. Yeah, being reminded that you matter and that you're a part of something. Yeah . And you want to make something bigger with your colleagues Ritu chattergy , thank you so much for bringing us this reporting. Always a pleasure, Emily . This episode was produced by Aru Neyer and edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer. I'm Ritu ji, and I'm Emily Kwang. Thank you for listening to Shorewave, the science podcast from NPR.