Work from home and happiness - An empirical research study

The flexibility of working hours and location has become an integral part of employers' corporate policy. In the post-pandemic era, location-based flexibility in particular seems to be the working practise that employees want to keep. Although many positive aspects of working from home or remotely have been highlighted in the literature over the years, the disadvantages of these flexible forms of work have also been identified. In light of these trends in work organisation, or the fact that work from home could become standard practise in many companies in the coming years, we were interested in investigating the relationship between working from home and overall employee happiness. Throughout history, happiness has been described as the natural goal of life and the ultimate end of temporal existence. The positive psychology introduced the concept of happiness to a wider audience, not only at an individual level, but also at the level of organisations and entire nations. Moreover, happiness has recently been promoted as a macroeconomic concept that is now actively pursued by countries and their governments. In order to develop policies that influence the happiness levels of people and countries, it is important to gain knowledge about the different factors that influence happiness, including human resource practises. As employment nowadays occupies a central place in people?s lives, it is postulated that the workplace plays a crucial role in people?s happiness. This served as motivation to investigate whether working from home, as a highly sought-after practise, is positively related to overall happiness. The empirical study was conducted using a questionnaire on a sample of 87 employees, mostly young, highly educated and employed in various industries, most of them in the banking sector. Of all sampled participants, two thirds had the option to work from home and most of them utilised it. The research results show that almost half of them believe that the main advantage of working from home is the time saved by not having to commute while the lack of communication with colleagues and/or superiors was identified as a main disadvantage. However, the relationship between working from home and overall happiness was non-significant and almost non-existent. Flexible working options should be significantly revised in the future to account not just for the potential benefits but also for its disadvantages.