The effects of teleworking on the mental health of public servants: A scoping review

Background: The widespread adoption of teleworking by the brazilian public administration could have implications for mental health, especially in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. The literature points to both negative and positive impacts of the implementation of this way of working, so that, especially in the public service, its relationship with health processes remains poorly demarcated and poorly defined. Purpose: In this article, our aim is to conduct a scoping review (ScR) of the effects of telework on the mental health of civil servants and what strategies have been developed by public organizations to promote health by identifying, mapping and synthesizing existing studies. Method: This ScR includes 13 studies, identified from searches conducted in the Scielo, Spell, PePSIC and Web of Science databases, considering publications over a 10-year period (2014-2023), in the Brazilian ad international contexts, in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. Results: The results show that there is a predominance of Brazilian production, which indicated that teleworking requires an articulation with an adequate work-family relationship, workload control, job crafting, autonomy and physical and personal structure for the perception of a healthy activity to occur. Conclusions: As a managerial contribution, the paper proposes an integrated model between the health perspective and ways to mitigate the negative effects of teleworking among civil servants. When it comes to theoretical contribution, the research describes which are the focuses of teleworking on public administration related to mental health, highlighting possibilities of new studies to provide better conditions to work.