Well, what do you know? It turns out us Brits quite like working from home and don’t really fancy returning to full-time office work once things return to post-COVID-19 normality.
In fact, according to a survey conducted by Eskenzi PR and OnePoll, 9 in 10 people would prefer to continue working from home with 35% keen on a 50-50 split between office and home working.
Just under one-third (31%) of the 1,000 people surveyed said they would be happy working from home four or more days per week, one-quarter would be happy doing the same once a week with 35% happiest with a split down the middle.
But with just 9% expressing happiness with working in the office full-time, that leaves 91% of us saying we want to work from home in some measure if and when things get back to normal.
Reasons given for the shift in mentality include time wasted commuting, a more relaxed working environment at home and being able to dress how you choose.
Commenting on the findings, Yvonne Eskenzi, founder of Eskenzi PR, said, “This survey shows that for the first time ever, people have had a taste of working from home and they love it because they’re more relaxed, they don’t need to travel and can spend time with their family and pets.
“Interestingly, a third of respondents think the ideal working week would be better spent half at home and half in the office. We can only hope that this great remote working experiment has shown employers that their staff can be trusted to work just as productively from home; particularly as it also appears to have a positive impact on their well-being as well as the environment.
“This can also be good for companies’ productivity and profitably, as they’ll need less office space with fewer people there 100% of the time.”
Other interesting findings include 34% of people saying being at home for deliveries as an important factor and while almost a quarter of those suveyed in the East Midlands and Scotland (23% and 22% respectively) were keen to work from home every day, that figure dropped to 8% in Northern Ireland.
