Poll: Workers Don’t Want to Return to the Office Full-Time
No commute. No dress code. Flexible hours. Work life balance.
Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing is clear: workers really enjoy doing their jobs from home.
Pew Research Center polled over 10,000 U.S. adults about their remote-work preferences in October 2020 and again in January 2022.
In January 2022, 61% of respondents said they were choosing to keep working from home even though only 38% said their physical offices are closed or unavailable to work from.
42% of remote workers cite coronavirus as a reason for working from home in 2022 vs. 57% in 2020
76% say it is their preference for working from home that's the major reason they’re doing so (vs. 60% in 2020)
There has been a significant increase in the share saying the fact that they’ve relocated away from the area where they work is a major reason why they’re currently teleworking (17% in 2022 vs. 9% in 2020).
Moreover, many workers simply don’t want to go back to their old desks or to how things were before after experiencing a new world of work life balance.
60% of workers with jobs that can be done from home say when the coronavirus outbreak is over, if they have the choice, they’d like to work from home all or most of the time (up from 54% in 2020)
Within the tech industry, recent studies have made it clear that many technologists have shifted to either full-time or hybrid remote work. Tech pros like how hybrid work allows them to interact with colleagues and managers face-to-face, while still getting all the benefits of working from home for most of the week.
In Dice’s 2021 Technologist Sentiment Report, 85% of technologists said they found the prospect of hybrid work anywhere from somewhat to extremely desirable.
94% of younger technologists (between 18 and 34 years old) thought of a hybrid workplace as somewhat, very, or extremely desirable, compared to 84% of those ages 35 and older.
"The bigger question is whether executives and managers will listen to workers' needs. Last year’s Future Forum Pulse survey asked 10,500 knowledge workers around the world about their companies’ approach to flexible work; some 66 percent of executives reported designing their post-pandemic policies with 'little to no direct input from employees'. That’s not a good sign. With the tech unemployment rate notably low at the moment, technologists feel empowered to walk out the door and find a company that fits their remote and scheduling needs."
Source: Dice / Pew