Following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s addressing the country on the 10/05/2020 in which he has eased some lockdown measures, more than half of employees state they are happy to carry on working from home at least until the end of May before returning to work.
This is according to StarLeaf, the UK-based global video meetings provider, who found that 57 per cent of workers who are now remote working due to COVID-19 are comfortable carrying on doing so until the end of May, despite the PM stating that certain employees such as those in construction or manufacturing should be “actively encouraged” to return to work from today onwards.
Just under a quarter (23 per cent) would like to go back to work in two months’ time.
Nearly two-thirds (60 per cent) of workers would like to carry on working from home once the lockdown has been fully lifted as opposed to 31 per cent who would not.
It would appear that remote working has not had an adverse effect on people’s standard of work with just under half of the staff saying this. This has always been a worry of remote working.
Mark Richer, CEO of StarLeaf said:
Working from home has suddenly become the norm for millions of Brits, and this trend looks set to continue after lockdown measures are progressively eased.
People are recognising the benefits of being able to work from the comfort of their home, giving them greater flexibility over how and where they spend their time.
Improvements in communications and collaboration technology means that remote and home working have become a viable reality for both employees and businesses.
Organisations must adapt to this rise in popularity in order to thrive. Now is the time to build strong remote working practices with the best technology to support secure, reliable and seamless work across office-based staff and remote colleagues.
Mr Johnson also announced that some primary schools may partially re-open from 1st June which has resulted in 362,000 people signing a petition campaigning to give parents the option not to send their children back to school if they do open in June.
Lucy Browne who started the petition on Change.org said:
Many of us have lost confidence in the Government’s handling of this crisis and feel it is too early to return children to schools. As a mum I don’t want to face serious repercussions for making a choice I feel affects the safety of my daughter during a global pandemic.
To obtain these results, 1,002 UK adult members currently working from home were polled online by Hanbury Strategy, a strategic advisory firm on behalf of StarLeaf between 1st- 4th May 2020.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
