Home office becomes new normality: expert

The Covid-19 pandemic made working from home a surprise for many companies, for others an acceleration of a trend that had been visible for some time. Were it not for the coronavirus, the popularity of working from home would have grown gradually over the years, including influenced by the requirements of the young, mobile generation, global digitization. Just before the pandemic, the research of PwC showed that 70 percent of millennials want to be able to choose where to perform their professional duties. In turn, research conducted at the turn of March and April 2020 by Global Workplace Analytics shows that up to 90% of office workers in the world would like half of their duties to be performed from home.

"The home office before March 2020 was one of the key benefits. During the lockdown, it became a compulsion, not a choice, for many. Employees, however, want flexibility, the possibility of choosing to work from home or office, and not orders and prohibitions limiting their right to freedom," Paulina Łączek-Ciećwierz, President of the Management Board of RICG (Recruitment International Consulting Group), said.

Employers, in turn, most often want the team to be together, they feel more comfortable when they supervise work in the office. Both sides are right, and reality shows that many employers and employees are not ready for the new normality. Just a year ago, in 2019, only about 5 percent of employees aged 15-64 in the European Union usually worked from home. Most often they were residents of Scandinavia and the Netherlands, Poland and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were lagging behind.

"Today we have a new normality and the percentage of people working in this way has increased significantly, which was accelerated by the pandemic. Still, however, the home office is for a selected group of specialists and managers. 2020 does not mean the end of office work, but the beginning of greater possibilities of choosing a place to work. remotely supervising managers is also a new situation to which they must adapt,” Paulina Łączek-Ciećwierz added.

(WBJ)