Resumo

Organizations have been going through a series of (r)evolutions, looking for adaptations in order to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Among them, the telework which is being widely adopted by the Brazilian Public Administration. Thus, it is necessary to discuss the health impacts of its compulsory adoption among public servants. Considering the speed of implementation of this way of working made managers with little or no experience command teams that were in the same situation, which may have caused negative impacts on teleworkers (Carvalho et al., 2023).

The question is: "were public servers impacted in their health by the compulsory adoption of telework?". Thus, the objective is to analyze the scenarios before and after the adoption of compulsory telework among public servants of Higher Federal Educational Institutions (IFES, in Portuguese), in view of the absences due to Common Mental Disorders (CMD).

A widespread concept of telework is that it is a way of performing work outside the physical structure of the organization, using information technology tools on a part-time or full-time basis (Leite, Lemos & Schneider, 2019). Due to the complexity of a definition, health should be understood in the face of health-disease processes as a social and political demand (Almeida Filho, 2018). Critical thinking consists in confronting social facts with the concepts that are employed for the phenomenon (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1973).

A descriptive study was conducted. Documents were used regarding quantitative data on the withdrawal of federal civil servants, from the records of the SIASS. Access was made through the Access to Information Law requesting: Cause of the leave; Days of leave; Organization; Year the leave occurred; Job title of the person leaving; All data for the period between 2012 and 2021. The statistical analysis used measures for numerical or categorical calculations (Mean, Standard Deviation [SD] and ANOVA) and prevalence ratios. All tests took into consideration a 5% statistical significance level.

There was a difference between the pre- and post-pandemic period. ANOVA was performed to confirm whether there is a difference between the medians of the number of days of absence in the period before the pandemic and in the most critical periods of the pandemic. A statistically significant difference was found in relation to the other ICDs. There was a total of 2,494 licenses, with mental disorders corresponding to 17.1%. It was found that in the institutions studied, mood disorders were the most prevalent, representing 50.8% of the total number of leaves.

The results indicated that there was a difference between the investigated periods, mainly with the observation of the increase in the number of days away from work. The investigation through the access to official records of leaves of absence, using descriptive statistical methods, from a critical analysis, based on the Cycle of Epistemic Matrices contributed too much. Considering that it made it possible to verify that teleworkers, even in such an adverse situation, were able to find solutions, avoiding greater impacts on mental health, this was less dramatic than expected.

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