As employers eagerly await the Covid-19 vaccines that promise to return staff to offices after months of working from home, new reports indicate getting them back won’t be easy.
More than half of U.S. employees currently working from home say they’d like to keep their remote arrangements beyond the pandemic, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday.
One-third of those surveyed said they want the option to telework at least sometimes. Only 11% said they ‘rarely or never’ want to work from home, according to Pew’s October survey of almost 6,000 U.S. adults.
Most Americans won’t have a choice. While almost two-thirds of workers holding a bachelor’s degree or higher said their work can be done remotely, only 23% of those without that educational attainment can, according to Pew.
Most who do have the choice -- especially those over 50 --said it’s been easy for them to complete projects on time and stay motivated.
A recent University of Chicago survey found similar results. Employees viewed working from home as a perk for which they were potentially willing to trade as much as 8% of their salaries. The study concluded that remote work following the pandemic could raise productivity as much as 2.4%, according to the paper released Dec. 2.
Its survey of 15,000 Americans “reveals that the experience has been positive and better than expected for the majority of firms and workers.”
‘Fear of Proximity’
Increased flexibility was often cited as a reason for preferring the home office. But worries about getting sick also ranked high on the Pew survey.
Similarly, the University of Chicago paper said 70% of its survey respondents expressed a reluctance to return to some pre-pandemic activities even when a vaccine for Covid-19 becomes widely available -- specifically riding subways and crowded elevators, or dining indoors at restaurants.
“This persistent fear of proximity to others is likely to leave some residual demand for social distancing at workplaces and prop up demand for working from home in the coming years,” the authors of the university paper wrote.