#WFH Survey Results
Our survey on Working from Home during the COVID-19 pandemic has produced some very interesting results from respondents from a wide range of industries, roles, business types and sizes, and countries.
To see the full extent of the survey results, click HERE.
Survey demographics
We had 162 individuals respond to our survey. 35% of respondents work in Technology in some capacity, while the rest work in a wide range of industries including Banking, Retail, Insurance, Travel and Hospitality.
52% of respondents work in companies with 0-50 employees, 16% for companies with 51-250 employees, 9% for companies of 251-1000 employees, 10% for companies of 1001-5000 employees, and 13% for companies of over 5001 employees.
Working from Home during COVID-19 trends and preferences
An impressive number of individuals surveyed were already well set up to work from home (52%) and over a third face no obstacles with working from home (36%). Only 7% of businesses of survey respondents were not set up or had the infrastructure to enable working from home at the start of the pandemic, with 41% of businesses being able to adapt quickly to the change.
While our survey respondents are largely enjoying the fact that they no longer need to commute to work (51%), they are struggling to deal with the lack of boundaries between their work and home lives (29%), distractions at home (24%), and difficulties communicating or collaborating with colleagues (23%).
Unfortunately, across industries, 50% of respondents felt that loss of revenue is the biggest difficulty facing their business during the pandemic. This is not at all surprising given the way the pandemic has affected the global economy. Unsurprisingly, this was not the biggest concern for those in the Insurance or Utility industries – as theirs are businesses which provide essentials regardless of the state of the economy. Second to loss of revenue came an inability to function as normal (25%), as the pandemic has really been a shock to many businesses’ day to day operations.
Ultimately, the vast majority of respondents (79%), regardless of differences in industry, location, role or any other controlling factor would prefer a hybrid of working from the office and working from home. People clearly appreciate the freedom, choice and flexibility that comes with the hybrid model.
When given only a choice between working from home or the office, we had anticipated that those in the Technology industry would prefer working from home over those in other industries, but we discovered that 57% would prefer to work from the office. Interestingly, 57% of respondents working in Banking would prefer to work from home.
While company founders much preferred to work from home (57%), C-suite executives preferred working from the office (73%). This is likely a testament to the size of their companies, as many company founders are responsible for a smaller contingency of employees, which may mean that resources can be better spent elsewhere, while C-suite executives with larger workforces may prefer to manage them in person. In general, those in mid-sized firms (251-1000 employees) were the least likely to work from home regularly or occasionally before the pandemic, with 42% saying they never worked from home.
What’s in store for the future?
There was no general consensus amongst respondents as to when things will return to the way they were prior to COVID-19. There was a fairly equal distribution of individuals anticipating that things will not return to normal until the autumn (28%) or until 2021 (27%). Smaller percentages believed things would return to the way they were by the summer (14%) or the winter (11%). A considerable amount of people (16%) anticipated that things will never return to how they once were once the pandemic eventually inches to a close.
Almost everyone agreed that working from home will become more commonplace in some capacity, but respondents were equally divided as to whether it would be slightly more prevalent (47%) or a lot more prevalent (45%).
While nothing is certain about what COVID-19 will mean for the future of the global economy and workforce, we hope these survey results will give you some insight into the current sentiments and concerns some individuals around the world are feeling as they work from home this spring.
