Trevino Garcia Lorena Edith, Christensen Jan Olav
Research group for Work Psychology and Physiology, National Institute of Occupational Health, Pb 5330 Majorstuen, 0304, Oslo, Norway.
Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2025 Jul;98(4-5):399-407. doi: 10.1007/s00420-025-02136-9. Epub 2025 Mar 25.
Few studies have investigated the relationship between post-pandemic hybrid work-from-home (WFH), mental health, and work-life balance. We examined the association between hybrid WFH, mental distress, availability demands, work-life conflict, and life-work conflict.
Data from 24,763 office workers in the public sector in Norway were analyzed by linear and logistic regressions.
Employees practicing flexible hybrid WFH (i.e., when needed/desired) were less likely to report mental distress (measured by the Hopkins Symptom-Checklist; HSCL-5) than those not practicing WFH. WFH being self-chosen was associated with less distress. Flexible WFH was also associated with availability demands, work-life conflict, and life-work conflict, which were, in turn, linked to distress. The risk of distress increased with the number of weekly days of flexible WFH. Workers with fixed agreements to regularly WFH did not report significantly less distress than those with no WFH. However, fixed WFH was associated with lower availability demands, not with work-life conflict, and was more often self-chosen than flexible WFH.
Flexible WFH may alleviate distress but may also indicate attempts to cope with taxing availability demands, and may even introduce stressors that could reverse beneficial effects. Our results should motivate nuanced, multifactorial assessments of WFH in organizational practice and research.
很少有研究调查疫情后混合居家办公（WFH）、心理健康和工作生活平衡之间的关系。我们研究了混合WFH、精神困扰、工作要求、工作-生活冲突和生活-工作冲突之间的关联。
对挪威公共部门24763名办公室工作人员的数据进行线性和逻辑回归分析。
采用灵活混合WFH（即按需/按意愿）的员工比不采用WFH的员工报告精神困扰（用霍普金斯症状清单；HSCL-5测量）的可能性更低。自主选择WFH与较少的困扰相关。灵活WFH还与工作要求、工作-生活冲突和生活-工作冲突相关，而这些又与困扰有关。随着每周灵活WFH天数的增加，困扰风险上升。有固定WFH协议的员工报告的困扰并不比没有WFH的员工显著更少。然而，固定WFH与较低的工作要求相关，与工作-生活冲突无关，并且比灵活WFH更常是自主选择的。
灵活WFH可能减轻困扰，但也可能表明是在努力应对繁重的工作要求，甚至可能引入压力源，从而抵消有益影响。我们的结果应促使在组织实践和研究中对WFH进行细致入微的多因素评估。
