Member Article

The Life of Remote Work: Current Statistics in the World and Predictions for 2021

Due to Covid 19, remote work became even more popular around the globe. But what influence does it have? Let’s dig deeper into the statistics.

The Statistics on Remote Work in the World

According to Enterprise Technology Research, IT decision-makers from the US expect the percentage of people working remotely to increase to 34.4% in 2021, compared to 16.4% before the coronavirus outbreak.

It is predicted that nearly 90% of employees working in the technology and communication sector are the first to be permitted to work from home after Covid 19 backs down. International organizations are obviously more supportive when it comes to letting their employees work remotely in comparison to local companies.

While the percentage of employees working remotely before the coronavirus outbreak was around 4.7% in the UK, and 3.6% in the US, 14.1% of the employees in the Netherlands report frequent working away from the office, according to the BBC. Moreover, the Netherlands has led the global shift toward remote work, with only Finland catching up in recent years and other top tech countries lagging behind.

1.2 million Dutch said they worked remotely in 2019, with around 13.7% of Dutch people working from home, outrunning Luxembourg (12.7%) and Finland (12.3%), says Dutchreview. To put it into perspective, the European average percentage of people working remotely is only 5%.

About 42% of German companies said they will allow employees to work from home after Covid 19. Yet a large percentage of the surveyed are still uncertain whether to choose office or remote. Germany even released a law to give people the legal possibility to work from home. Companies will let their employees spend half of their work time doing it from home after Covid 19.

According to Finextra, More than 3/4 of 632 the UK-based financial services sector employees say they can work from home during the pandemic without losing productivity. The possibility of partially remote work has been accepted so positively that people are keen to work from home full time. Before Covid 19, less than 30% of people had worked from home at all. During the peak of the first lockdown in 2020, about 50% of all employees in the UK worked from home, according to the Office of National Statistics.

On the whole, this has been seen as a positive move toward remote work. It has long been giving employees greater autonomy over their lives. A recent study found that 70% of SMEs in the UK were making savings of up to £840 per month by working remotely throughout the lockdown period. Indeed, a recent poll of 1,000 UK workers found that almost a third would rather quit their job than lose the option to work from home on a permanent basis.

Some negative aspects of remote work?

A great percentage of people reported having inconvenience while working remotely. Some of the more common are:

1. **Distraction.**Constant interruption from roommates, children, pets when working from home, which makes it hard to stay focused.
2. Work-life balance. It is complicated to unplug from work when the working day is over. This behavior destroys work-life balance. The number 1 wellbeing issue when working remotely is “I am tired.”
3. Inconvenient working environment. According to the YouGov survey conducted some three months after offices were closed and which interviewed 1,195 employees, showed that 41% of home workers have an “inappropriate” working environment. Almost two-thirds (64%) have resorted to make-shift arrangements at kitchen tables, sofas, and beds.
4. Loneliness. When you are surrounded by people in the office who have the same goal as you —to work, you will hardly feel you are alone. Thus, companies started organizing daily sync-up calls to help the employees to stay on the same page and reduce the feeling of loneliness or abandonment.
5. **Difficult or missing onboarding.**Remote work makes it hard to do the onboarding — one of the vital parts of the process.
6. Procrastination or burnouts. At home you can turn to work any time, thus many tasks may be procrastinated or delayed. Burnouts can happen because some people find it hard to stay focused on the meetings.

Remote Work: More About Productivity

Around 48.6% out of 1,000+ CIOs interviewed noticed positive changes in the productivity level since employees began working remotely, with only 28.7% of respondents indicating a decline in productivity.

Employees aged 31-45 are the most motivated to work more flexibly (53%), while workers under 30 are the keenest to work from home permanently (28%), according to Finextra.

According to the research made by Citrix, people are started to work more hours per day, namely:

• 77 % in the US
• 60.9 % in France
• 80.8 % in Australia
• 76.2 % in Germany
• 70.80 % in Italy
• 68.2 % in the UK

With the same or higher productivity level:

• 69 % of the employees working in the US
• 62.9 % of the employees working in France
• 69.6 % of the employees working in Australia
• 74.20 % of the employees working in Germany
• 78.9 % of the employees working in Italy
• 62.70 % of the employees working in the UK

Despite the fact people enjoy the opportunities to work remotely, the employees from the UK and US would like to return to the office after the quarantine.

Remote work Impact

1. The increased number of people working remotely will facilitate more companies to outsourсe, which indeed brings many benefits such as reduced expenses.
2. Remote work is increasing employees’ productivity.
3. Remote work is predicted to force companies to abandon dense office spaces.
4. Remote work increases employees’ happiness rate since when working remotely people have more time for their hobbies, family, and children.
5. The extensive demand for online learning. It doesn’t matter if it is professional learning or just a hobby.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by DAXX .