The future of offices is cloudy following COVID-19 work-from-home company policies.
Photo: Tom Foremski
A large part of the workforce is not a fan of working from home according to a survey from ClickMeeting that found nearly one-quarter (23%) would rather be back in the office.
And Glassdoor released the top tech firms with the best work-life balance during COVID-19 lockdowns.
The ClickMeeting survey asked 550 people in the US and United Kingdom and found that dissatisfaction with working from home was related to not having all the equipment people needed, not having enough space at home, having slow Internet, and not being compensated for their employer’s use of their home and Internet services.
For nearly 6 out of ten people this was their first experience of any type of remote work. About 4 out of ten were unable to fully work from home or their profession didn’t allow it.
For those that were working from home 59% reported a positive experience but 23% preferred the office, and about one-half missed their social connections with colleagues.
The COVID-19 emergency lockdowns forced nearly all types of businesses to arrange for employees to be able to work from home but once the threat of COVID-19 lifts it seems a hybrid model based in the office and home will emerge: with 46% supporting it, but with one-third adamantly behind 100% work from home while 15% supporting only office-based work.
BALANCE WORK LIFE
Glassdoor, where employees post information about their employers, examined the issue of work and life balance, a tough question with so many working from home. It analyzed millions of company reviews posted between March and September and came up with a list of the highest rated companies for work-life balance during COVID-19.
Glassdoor says that people’s mental health is closely tied to work-life balance and that it found a big jump (42%) in the discussion of such topics during COVID-19 lockdowns compared with six months prior.
A list of twenty top US companies includes eight tech companies: Digital Prospectors (#2), AppFolio (#4), Box (#12); Slack (#14), Appris (#16), DocuSign (#17), SAP (#18), and Zoom Video Communications (#19). The top company was Acuity Insurance.