New research has found a majority of UK employees feel a mix of office-based and remote working would be the best way forward in a post COVID-19 world.
The ‘Resetting Normal: Defining the New Era of Work’ study was carried out by from the Adecco Group UK and Ireland, surveying 1,000 UK employees alongside workers in eight other countries around the world to understand their desires and expectations for the world of work post COVID-19.
The findings showed 77% of employees would prefer hybrid working, whilst 79% thought it was important that their company implemented more flexibility in how and where staff can work.
However, the findings also showed that employees were worried that employer’s expectations of what hybrid-working should look like would not match their own. Whilst employees would rather have an even split of working from home and in the office, many felt their company would expect them to work from the office more than two thirds (66%) of the time.
Alongside prompting the workforce to question where they want to work going forward, the pandemic has also given rise to a strong sense that the traditional 9-5 needs to be reconsidered. The study found that 68% of UK employees think that set hour contracts are no longer relevant to modern ways of working, whilst the same number believe their employer should revisit the length of the working week and the hours their staff are expected to work. Ultimately, 74% think employee contracts should focus more on meeting the needs of the role and less on the numbers of hours worked.
On the findings, Alex Fleming, President and Country Head of the Adecco Group UK&I, commented: “As lockdown restrictions continue to lift across the UK, businesses will gradually have to start shifting their focus from purely surviving, to planning how they can thrive in the new era of work. This is a unique opportunity for business leaders to hit reset on existing working patterns, and consider what, for instance, the new model of flexible working should look like. Crucially, these considerations should take into account what employee’s expectations are on these issues. Those businesses who welcome the new challenges and opportunities, will be able to create working practices that will benefit both them and their employees for the long term which will undoubtedly enhance colleague loyalty.”
For more content on the future of the workplace, click here.
For the research, a total of 8,000 office-based workers between the ages of 18 and 60 years old across the UK, USA, Japan, Germany, Italy, Spain and France, were surveyed throughout May 2020.
Content Team
Work in Mind is a content platform designed to give a voice to thinkers, businesses, journalists and regulatory bodies in the field of healthy buildings.
