The death of workplace culture: Only 29% of Brits are office based
New research reveals more people than not in the UK now work from home and although productivity isn’t being affected, working environments are severely suffering.
Gone are the days of leaving the office at the door once you’ve finished work. New research from the Global Payroll Association shows 31% of UK office workers spend half of their week working from home, 21% have a flexible arrangement and 19% work from home permanently. This means just 29% of people work entirely from the office.
To conduct their research, experts surveyed 1,006 office workers to discover what the benefits and potential downfalls are of remote working.
A large handful of participants (37%) revealed they’re more productive at home and the majority (57%) work longer hours and should, therefore, be paid just as much as they would be if they were in the office.
Against this backdrop, 37% also claim a balance between home and office allows them to be most productive and only 26% attest to having maximum productivity when working in the office.
However, whilst productivity remains intact, people who are based at home have expressed concerns about remote working’s impact on workplace culture, not least socialising.
For example, when it comes to meetings, people are split on whether online video is a sufficient replacement for face-to-face. If it’s an internal meeting with colleagues, 46% believe they’re better conducted face-to-face, as opposed to 60% who believe in person meetings to be better for external clints.
In addition, relationships are central to a good workplace culture, with 81% of workers admitting that the social aspects of work are important to them. 61% also believe that socialising outside of work, such as evening drinks, is important to fostering a good working environment and, as such, 78% of respondents believe that remote working has damaged the social aspects of working that mean so much.
Melanie Pizzey, CEO and founder of the Global Payroll Association, commented: ‘Allowing people to work from home is clearly a positive for many employees, but it’s fair to say that we could be lying to ourselves about just how productive we are when we spend more of the day than we should nipping to the supermarket, or taking forty winks.
‘It’s also clear that the social element of the workplace is starting to become extinct, and this is extremely important, both when it comes to internal bonding within the workforce, as well as nurturing those all-important external relationships that can be so important in getting deals over the line.
‘Unfortunately, many employers feel as though they need to keep an element of flexible working in order to keep with the times, but in some industries, this simply isn’t sensible and doing so could do more harm than good.’
Image: charlesdeluvio
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