The majority of UK office workers expect to be able to work their preference in terms of their work location mix. However, a substantial number may yet be disappointed in their employer’s approach to post-Covid working.
Remote working is on the rise – in part necessitated by Covid-19 – but what does the future hold for the UK workplace and is this the death of the office? Our ‘Get Hybrid Working Done’ survey sets out to investigate.
The research findings are based on a survey of 2,533 randomly selected respondents, consisting of UK employees over the age of 17 that had worked from home during the Coronavirus lockdown. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2 percentage points, giving a confidence level of 95%. Where scaling/ranking were not used, all responses were randomised to minimise bias.
Executive Summary
For those in a rush, we present to you the top findings of the survey:
- Remote working is becoming a must have:
87% of UK office workers stated their desire to be able to work from home at least some of the time. - However, the office is not dead yet:
Only 26% of UK office workers say that they want to work from home on a full-time basis. - Hybrid working could become the new normal:
Just shy of 70% of UK office workers stated their desire to be able to work both from home and the office. - But will employees get what they want?:
Only 23% of UK office workers say their employer has confirmed they’ll be able to work in their preferred manner moving forwards.
Unsurprisingly the number of normally office-based workers operating fully remotely rose significantly during lockdown. With lockdown easing, the majority are still working fully remotely, however, our research suggests that the overwhelming preference for post-Covid working is for a more hybrid approach (i.e. working partly from home and partly in the office). Worryingly some people were required to work exclusively from the office even at the height of lockdown, showing an inflexibility in some employers’ approaches. The majority of UK office workers expect to be able to work their preference in terms of their work location mix. However, a substantial number may yet be disappointed in their employer’s approach to post-Covid working.
- Pre-lockdown 56.3% of people worked predominantly from the office with the majority citing company policy as being the primary obstacle to home working.
- 5.2% of people still had to work from the office at the height of lockdown and nearly a quarter of people (24%) operated in a hybrid fashion.
- Over 87% of people stated their desire to work from home for at least part of the working week.
- Just over 3 out of 5 people (60.9%) would like to work in a hybrid fashion (partly in office, partly from home) and over a quarter (26.3%) would like to work remotely all of the time.
- Interestingly 12.8% of people would prefer to work exclusively from the office, meaning that 73.7% of people would like to work from the office at least some of the time. The office may well look different going forwards, but it’s far from dead yet.
- 63.5% of people either expect or have had confirmed that their employers will allow them to work their location preference.
- 22.9% of people don’t think they’ll be allowed to work their preference while 13.6% are not sure. That’s a substantial proportion of the UK workforce that might consider themselves as being disadvantaged in terms of job flexibility. Could this lead to top talent leaving their current companies to join more progressive employers? Only time will tell.
- The survey unearthed some interesting insights into some of the more unusual places people have been working out of during lockdown. 1.2% of respondents admitted to working from the bathroom on occasion (echoey conference calls anyone?), that’s equivalent to 158,207 people in the UK. There was commandeering of children’s playrooms and bedrooms by 3.9% and 8.5% of people respectively. And 2.7% of people took advantage of the early lockdown heatwave by working outdoors away from their home (presumably in parks and beauty spots).
Interactive Infographic
Explore the results of our ‘Get Hybrid Working Done’ survey with our interactive infographic. Filterable by ‘Career’ (i.e. industry sector) or ‘Region’.
Click on the image below to see the interactive infographic and download a copy of the full survey report.
LegalReader thanks our friends at Atlas Cloud for sharing this excerpt of their survey.
About Atlas Cloud
Atlas Cloud is a specialist IT service provider that uses the best of Microsoft 365 and Azure to enable secure work from any location. Operating nationally from their Newcastle headquarters, they offer consultancy through to fully-managed services – and anything in between.
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