Work from Home Likely to Remain Elevated Post Pandemic
Months of punishing inflation have pushed East Hollywood resident Diane Roque to economize by canceling her family’s cable subscription and prioritizing cooking at home. Now high prices are making her take a more economical approach to her holiday shopping. However, productivity growth over the past 15 years has been lacklustre at best, and these latest numbers should be a powerful reminder to government to grasp the nettle on productivity-enhancing reforms. While the population-wide impacts on productivity are unclear, a bigger push on COVID-19 vaccinations has plenty of potential upside. After the end of restrictions in 2022, working hours expanded again in these sectors and pushed productivity in the opposite direction. While this is a slight improvement on the previous quarter, it represents a slide of about 0.9 per cent since just before the pandemic.
This group had experiences with WFH 1–2 days a week before the pandemic outbreak, and their work mode switched to WFH every day during the pandemic due to their employers’ policies. Some individuals of this group will maintain their previous WFH frequency – 1–2 days a week after the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of them are expecting to increase their WFH frequency to 3–4 days a week after the pandemic. Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to study how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the workplace and specifically how workers with jobs that can be done from home have adapted their work schedules.
Remote and hybrid work are making people happier and less stressed.
About nine-in-ten workers who say their employer has required employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine (92%) say they are fully vaccinated, including 58% who say they have received a booster shot. A smaller share of those who don’t have a vaccination requirement at work (65%) say they are fully vaccinated, with 38% saying they remote work statistics have received a COVID-19 vaccine booster. Some 39% of those whose employers have required employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine, and 35% of those in workplaces without a vaccination requirement say they are very satisfied with the measures that have been put in place to protect them from being exposed to the coronavirus.
In 2019, a PwC report titled “Seeing is believing” projected a $1.5 trillion addition to the global economy by 2030, all thanks to this technology. Another handful of years later, there was another spike of interest in telework. On the other side of the globe, 2010 and 2012 brought earthquakes to New Zealand. According to these numbers, it would seem that some businesses were hoping the crisis would blow over within weeks. Whether it was a forced transition or not, months of social-distancing rules, quarantine regulations, and lockdowns drove companies to re-think and restructure their processes. Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.
Teleworking and Health
Gallup’s June 2022 poll found 70 million or 56% of fulltime employees said they can do their job remotely. Of those, three in ten (21 million) currently worked exclusively at home, down from four in ten in February 2022, while another five in ten (35 million) worked at home part of the time. Decennial censuses show home-working was declining, both absolutely and relatively, from 4.7 million in 1960 to 2.2 million in 1980 (at right, top).
Among those surveyed between Aug. 19 and Dec. 21, 36.9% answered “yes.” This covers a period when the Household Pulse Survey asked questions on both teleworking and respondents’ health status. As many as 60% of companies now rely on such tools to track remote employees [12]. While these tools can aid productivity and accountability, they also pose privacy considerations, highlighting the need for transparency https://remotemode.net/ and consent in their use. The shift towards remote work has brought several notable trends to the forefront, shaping how companies and employees approach this model of work. As remote work becomes more prevalent, it’s important to understand workers’ sentiments towards this evolving model. Surveys and studies offer revealing insights into workers’ preferences and how remote work impacts their lives.
