While most UK workers are happy with how their employer is handing the transition to remote working during the Covid-19 outbreak, many fear a return to the status quo after lockdown.
The majority of UK workers (77%) feel employers are doing a good job at managing the remote work transition and 75% believe their manager trusts them to be productive, according to research commissioned by people analytics provider Visier. The study assessed attitudes of employees who are usually not allowed to work remotely or who only did so rarely prior to the Covid-19 outbreak.
The study suggests remote working has had a positive impact on staff who are working remotely for the first time. Nearly seven in ten workers (68%) feel they are either more productive or equally productive from home. And despite challenges many workers face with handling childcare and home schooling, 31% say work life balance has become easier since isolation began.
Only 31% say their employer has enforced new processes to check up on their output. However, 47% feel positive change in flexible working will be reversed after Covid-19, with employers returning to a limited and inflexible working from home policy after lockdown.
The poll analysed the remote working experiences of more than 1,000 people who are either not normally allowed to work from home or who do so no more than once per week on average.
“Covid-19 has prompted the world’s biggest home working experiment. It has rapidly sped up the future of work, and will impact the way we think about work in the years to come. The worst thing that companies can do is ignore what they have learned about their workforce and how they like to operate. Companies who have resisted the new world of work until now have had their worlds turned upside down but there is a real opportunity for HR leaders to help them continue their digital transformation,” said Jan Schwarz, co-founder of Visier.