Get me outta here: most don't want to return to office

Any company planning to get their workforce back under one roof could be in for a tough battle for the foreseeable future, with the vast majority of office staff reluctant to give up their new-found work from home freedoms.

While most marketing services groups have revealed their “roadmaps” for a return to work, a new study by access management firm Okta shows that just a quarter of UK office workers want to return full-time after the pandemic has subsided.

Only a minority (17%), however, want a fully remote-working arrangement, with one third (35%) preferring a more flexible approach, combining periods at home and in the office.

Based on a poll of more than 2,000 UK workers, the majority cite a better work-life balance, spending less time commuting and having more time to spend with family as the WFH benefits. But workers also claim remote working has actually improved their productivity.

Respondents explained that flexible working arrangements have helped them become more focused, while others said they are more productive due to extra free time afforded them by the lack of a commute. Some also said working from home freed them of distractions associated with the office.

It is all a far cry from three months ago, when self-appointed WFH “gurus” started dishing out advice on the phenomenon, as if it were a mysterious practice – much to the annoyance of former marketing professor Mark Ritson.

However, over half of UK employees had never worked from home before the pandemic hit, and some companies struggled to provide them with the appropriate tools to carry out their work efficiently.

For example, one in three respondents said that their business had not equipped them with the necessary hardware, such as a laptop, and a similar proportion reported that they could not access key software at the beginning of the pandemic.

It seems the biggest hurdle has been cultural. While the majority of workers say they are completely comfortable with virtual meetings, most of them also find that communication and collaboration with colleagues has been affected since the lockdown; almost 60% of UK workers miss having in-person conversations with their co-workers.

Okta EMEA vice-president and general manager Jesper Frederiksen said: “The idea of a shifted security perimeter is now everyone’s reality. Many organisations were forced to quickly spin up remote work environments and security tools to enable business continuity during this time.”

Even so, Frederiksen concluded: “The genie is out of the bottle. It’ll be very hard for organisations to re-impose a five-day-a-week commute. You can’t undo this experiment.”

TOPICS:coronavirus data-driven marketing