Effects of WFH life become more clear, experts say

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, we’ve seen sweeping changes to the workplace. Most notably, the workplace itself has become less of a physical location for many, as the work-from-home orders set during the pandemic lasted much longer than anticipated — and some employees became accustomed to them.

In 2023, Forbes found that many employees preferred working from home, citing increased flexibility and better mental health as some of the main reasons.

Pew Research Center found that 35% of workers with jobs that can be done remotely were working from home all of the time, a dramatic rise from just 7% before the pandemic began.

This year, many top companies, including Amazon, Disney and Google, are requiring employees to come back to the office full time, or at least part time. These companies have cited reasons like company culture and monitoring output as reasons they believe employees should be back in the office.

Here in Atlanta, many federal workers were required to return to their offices for in-person work last week to meet new requirements under President Donald Trump.

While the heyday of work-from-home life may be ending for some, the ways people’s lives changed for the better will still linger on.

“COVID was a catalyst for changing our mindsets about people and work, from a cynical, infantilizing view that we have to monitor employees to a deeply respectful view that most people want to do a good job,” Ed Frauenheim, senior director of content at Great Place to Work, an organization that consults on company culture, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

According to Frauenheim, companies and employees can benefit similarly through work-from-home schedules, saying that trusting people to work with autonomy is key to building great, high-performing organizations.

“Greater discretion over where and when we work also makes it much more possible to integrate our work lives with the rest of our lives,” Frauenheim said. “Many men, in particular, found themselves elevating their roles as caregivers while working from home during COVID — and they don’t want to stop.”

Working from home can do a lot to uplift the lives of employees, however, it can also hurt some employees depending on the stage of life they are in.

One concern: isolation.

“The primary costs are a blurring between personal and professional aspects of one’s life, social isolation, a loss of community in workplaces, which is so critical to ensuring productive and optimally functioning organizations,” said Dr. Lalita Kaligotla, professor of the practice at Emory University’s Woodruff School of Nursing.

The problems don’t end socially, as young employees’ future careers can also be delayed if most of the staff is working from home, explained Kaligotla. “For junior staff and/or new employees, working from home severely limits their avenues for networking and professional development, (which) is significantly better with in-person interactions.”

The benefits of working from home can also be hindered by company culture, which can make an employee feel even busier or more surveilled at home than in an office. Robert Rasmussen, CEO of software and services firm Agile Six, says working from home works best when employers have faith in their team.

“Work-from-home can be an amplification of toxic cultures or healthy cultures,” Rasmussen told the AJC. “It’s not so much about where you work, it’s about who you work for and why you work in the first place.”

“No one wants to go back to toxic places,” Rasmussen added.