The research project Gezond thuiswerken (working from home healthily) of Utrecht University aimed to study the health and well-being of Dutch employees that worked from home during the covid-19 pandemic. To stop the spread of infections, the Dutch government advised employees to work from home as much as possible during the data collection period (March-July 2021). As a result, many employees worked from home for the majority of their working hours, while before March 2020 only a small group of employees worked from home and for a limited number of hours. For many employees, the switch to working from home was large, and this research project tried to gain more insight into how employees experienced this new situation.
A second important aim of the project was to study in which ways employers can stimulate the health and well-being of their employees when these work from home. Many organisations offer worksite health promotion activities, but these are mostly connected to the workplace. When employees work from home, they cannot participate in these activities, so that both employees and employers cannot benefit from the alleged positive effects worksite health promotion has. The research project Working from home healthily therefore also studied which activities employees would be willing to participate in when working from home, and which factors influence this willingness, by using a survey experiment.
