As Brits head back to work, half of British workers DO NOT want to go back to pre-COVID working environments
Across the weekend and today, millions of businesses and workers have headed back to work for the first time in months. With offices reopening with strict social distancing measures in place and pubs and restaurants welcoming back patrons, the world of work for those in every part of the economy has changed drastically.
Today, Theta Financial Reporting, a chartered accountancy and consultancy firm specialising in freelance working options for the UK private sector, has released the first nationally representative survey across over 2,000 UK adults looking into how the UK workforce and business leaders feel about returning to work post-lockdown, and what it is that they are returning to.
Key stats
· Two-thirds of working Brits – 65% – do not feel comfortable commuting to work via public transport anymore and think it will be one of the most stressful parts of their day
· 57% of people do not want to go back to the normal way of working in an office environment with normal office hours
· A third of UK workers – 35% – say their company will return to the office with a smaller team with people handling more varied responsibilities
· Over a third – 35% – of Brits say going back to work in a traditional office environment will have a negative impact on their mental health, which in turn will negatively affect their productivity
· Nearly a fifth – 17% – of UK workers say their business will no longer be in a permanent office when they return to full-time work
· Over a quarter of British workers – 26% – say their company’s finance teams will not be returning to the office with other employees in July and will now work at home for the majority of the time
· 24% of Brits say their employer hasn’t explored any flexible working options to help them or their colleagues return to work
The survey unveils sentiments from both the UK workforce and business leaders about returning to the ‘normal’ way of working with over half of employees not wanting to return to work as they did. With the Prime Minister and other stakeholders in the economy hopefully to get people back into offices as soon as possible to begin to repair the damage done by the lockdown period, it may not ever return to how it was before.
With Transport for London, commercial landlords and train companies seemingly desperate to not only have Brits returning to work but also travelling to work, two-thirds of Brits do not feel comfortable commuting to work via public transport anymore. Despite this, many may be forced to do so as a quarter of working Brits state that their employer hasn’t explored flexible working options for them and their colleagues. More needs to be done by decision-makers to understand that people’s working environments may not just have changed during the lockdown period but may well have changed for good.
