Many Workers Would Prefer To Keep Working From Home At Least Some Of The Time
Because of coronavirus-related business shutdowns, many employees are suddenly working from home and not from their usual office. A growing number of employers have announced that they want to keep it that way — forever.
Twitter, which encouraged employees to work from home in early March, announced that if eligible employees want to continue to do so indefinitely, they can. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that 50% of his staff will likely be working from home within the next 10 years. Other companies have followed suit. In his company announcement of switching mostly to permanent remote work, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke declared, “Office centricity is over.”
But is a fully remote workforce what American professionals actually want? Although many American workers would be excited or relieved by the permanent switch to remote work, not everyone would be pleased, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov survey that provides a more nuanced picture of how Americans feel about working from home and returning back to the office.
Many employees surveyed wanted a mix of remote work and office work.
Workers were asked if COVID-19 were no longer a concern, and they had the choice to design their preferred work setup, what would they want it to look like?
Among those who said the question applied to them, 38% said a mix of working from home and working from the office was preferred, 26% said they wanted to work from home all the time, 27% said they wanted to work from the office all the time, and 9% were not sure what they’d pick.
In total, about 65% of those to whom the question applied said they want to be in the office all or some of the time.
Many people who were driven from their workplaces by the coronavirus pandemic say they wouldn’t mind too much if working from home became the new normal. When asked how they would feel if their employer told them to work from home permanently, more said they would welcome the change than not. About half of people who...
