The trend of working remotely has been slowly increasing globally since 2015, with a *** to ***** percent annual increase rate. However, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 upended the world economy and global markets. Employment trends were no exception to this, with the share of employees working remotely increasing to some ** percent in 2022 from just ** percent two years prior. The industry with the highest share of remote workers globally in 2023 was by far the technology sector, with over ** percent of tech employees worldwide working fully or mostly remotely. How are employers dealing with remote work? Many employers around the world have already adopted some remote work policies. According to IT industry leaders, reasons for remote work adoption ranged from a desire to broaden a company’s talent pool, increase productivity, and reduce costs from office equipment or real estate investments. Nonetheless, employers worldwide grappled with various concerns related to hybrid work. Among tech leaders, leading concerns included enabling effective collaboration and preserving organizational culture in hybrid work environments. Consequently, it’s unsurprising that maintaining organizational culture, fostering collaboration, and real estate investments emerged as key drivers for return-to-office mandates globally. However, these efforts were not without challenges. Notably, ** percent of employers faced employee resistance to returning to the office, prompting a review of their remote work policies.

Before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 17 percent of U.S. employees worked from home 5 days or more per week, a share that increased to 44 percent during the pandemic. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the remote working trend, as quarantines and lockdowns made commuting and working in an office close to impossible for millions around the world. Remote work, also called telework or working from home (WFH), provided a solution, with employees performing their roles away from the office supported by specialized technology, eliminating the commute to an office to remain connected with colleagues and clients. What enables working from home?

To enable remote work, employees rely on a remote work arrangements that enable hybrid work and make it safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Technology supporting remote work including laptops saw a surge in demand, video conferencing companies such as Zoom jumped in value, and employers had to consider new communication techniques and resources. Is remote work the future of work?

The response to COVID-19 has demonstrated that hybrid work models are not necessarily an impediment to productivity. For this reason, there is a general consensus that different remote work models will persist post-COVID-19. Many employers see benefits to flexible working arrangements, including positive results on employee wellness surveys, and potentially reducing office space. Many employees also plan on working from home more often, with 25 percent of respondents to a recent survey expecting remote work as a benefit of employment. As a result, it is of utmost importance to acknowledge any issues that may arise in this context to empower a hybrid workforce and ensure a smooth transition to more flexible work models.

Experimental estimates from the Annual Population Survey for homeworking in the UK, including breakdowns by sex, full-time or part-time, ethnicity, occupation, industry, qualifications, hours worked, pay and sickness absence among others. Includes regression outputs on the different outcomes for homeworkers.

In October 2025, approximately 13 percent of workers in Great Britain worked from home exclusively, with a further 27 percent working from home and travelling to work, while 45 percent only travelled to work. During this time period, the share of people only travelling to work was highest in March 2022, at 60 percent of respondents, with the peak for only working from home occurring in June 2020. In general, hybrid working has become steadily more popular than fully remote working, with the highest share of people hybrid working in November 2023, when 31 percent of people advising they were hybrid working. What type of workers are most likely to work from home? In 2020, over half of people working in the agriculture sector mainly worked from home, which was the highest share among UK industry sectors at that time. While this industry was one of the most accessible for mainly working at home, just six percent of workers in the accommodation and food services sector mainly did this, the lowest of any sector. In the same year, men were slightly more likely to mainly work from home than women, while the most common age group for mainly working from home was those aged 75 and over, at 45.4 percent. Over a long-term period, the share of people primarily home working has grown from 11.1 percent in 1998, to approximately 17.4 percent in 2020. Growth of Flexible working in the UK According to a survey conducted in 2023, working from home either on a regular, or ad hoc basis was the most common type of flexible working arrangement offered by organizations in the UK, at 62 percent of respondents. Other popular flexible working arrangements include the ability to work flexible hours, work part-time, or take career breaks. Since 2013, for example, the number of employees in the UK that can work flextime has increased from 3.2 million, to around 4.2 million by 2024. When asked why flexible work was important to them, most UK workers said that it supported a better work-life balance, with 41 percent expressing that it made their commute to work more manageable.

Curated dataset of more than 30 key statistics on remote and hybrid work between 2020 and 2025, including telework prevalence, employee preferences, demographic breakdowns, industry differences, productivity and engagement outcomes, and economic and environmental impacts of remote work in the U.S. and globally.

Data on working patterns and location of work of adults in Great Britain, including costs and benefits of homeworking and future expectations. Survey data from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

THE IMPACTS OF WORKING REMOTELY AND IN AN OFFICE

Abstract: Working from home nowadays, particularly after COVID-19 hit the world, became the preferable choice for many employees because it gives flexibility and saves more time, according to them. However, many studies revealed that working from home caused a negative effect on many employees’ mental and physical health, such as isolation and back pain. The careless and unplanned way of living while working remotely, such as lack of socialization and equipment for a healthy home office, is the cause for that negative effect. In this paper, we explore the reasons that lead to the negative impact of working remotely on mental and physical health and investigate whether employees are aware of the negative and the positive effects of working either from home or in an office. Our investigation involved a questionnaire handed to hundred employees and revealed that the majority of them were aware of the negative and the positive impacts of working remotely and in an office and suggest, therefore, a mixed-mode of working to obtain the best advantages of both modes.

Keywords: COVID-19; working from home; working in an office; questionnaire; advantages; disadvantages; negative impact; positive impact; mental health; physical health; work experience

1. Introduction

Who would not like to wake up late and avoid the traffic every morning? I always had dreamed of that, and I guess you too. Working from home, which provides these advantages, has become the preferred choice for many employees and employers for the sake of getting more flexibility, increasing productivity, and saving time and money (Ipsen et al., 2021). I have noticed, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, that many people switched willingly to work from home, expecting their life would totally improve. On the other hand, many people do not have the office work option. For instance, people work in the human resources, marketing, and customer service sectors (Iacurci, 2021). They work remotely until a hundred percent effective covid vaccine is developed. However, many studies, such as "Survey reveals the mental and physical health impacts of home working during Covid-19" by RSPH (2021), revealed that people who work from home are likely to suffer from mental and physical disorders.

In fact, the reason for the negative impact is not the work from home. Rather, it is the unmanaged lifestyle that comes with working from home. Of course, many other jobs still need people to be physically present, such as working in hospitals and beauty centers. However, Iacurci (2021) suggests that people will work remotely even after the pandemic finishes and the economy reopens. While many people are switching to work from home, and many others hoping so, it might be an opportunity for them to know the negative impact of working remotely, such as isolation and back pain, due to lack of socialization and equipment for a healthy home office. I am not willing to tell people what they should do in order to work healthily from home because this is not my study field. However, because I have experienced that negative impact, I will only give hints about the consequences, which could happen if they did not take care of themselves when working from home. Thus, this research investigated hundred people who have already worked before, regardless of gender identity, whether they are aware of the negative and the positive impacts of working from home in order to take care of themselves.

2. Literature review

Reviewing Worker's and Employees' Opinions in Working from Home

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, people could choose between working from home and in an office. However, many people are forced or got the opportunity to work from home to reduce the number of new daily infections during the pandemic. Thus, it was an opportunity for researchers to do research on a large number of people to figure out how working from home experience affected them. Also, after the pandemic is over, what would they prefer if they could choose between working remotely or being physically in an office.

In the study, "Six key advantages and disadvantages of working from home in Europe during COVID-19," Ipsen et al. (2021) investigated employees who have experience with working from home during the pandemic in 29 European countries. They used first the six key advantages and disadvantages approach, which involves the employees' opinions in working from home. Although the employees mentioned 16 disadvantages and 11 advantages, its results indicate that "the majority (55%) of employees were mostly positive about WFH" (p. 11). However, they assumed that maybe there are other circumstances that make the employees prefer working remotely over in an office. Hence, Ipsen et al. (2021) used the six factors approach, which involved the employe...

In the observed period, the number of people who usually work from home in Poland has increased. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the proportion of people working from home reached a record high of nearly **** percent in 2020.   Pros and cons of working remotely     The introduction of the home office brought in several benefits but also pitfalls. More flexible work times were considered the key advantage of remote work. On the other hand, applying more self-discipline proved to be the most significant disadvantage of working from home. Regarding any other additional costs related to remote working, almost every second employee faced higher electricity costs.   Freelancing in Poland      Most Polish freelancers work in copywriting and social media, whereas virtual assistance ranks among the least popular freelancing job sectors. Nevertheless, the share of Poles who earned over ***** zloty net per month from freelancing activities increased steadily over the years. In 2021, nearly ** percent of Polish freelancers had a monthly net income exceeding that amount. Moreover, when it comes to approaches to freelancing activity in Poland, every second freelancer considered their freelance work an additional income source.

A rising share of employees now regularly engage in working from home (WFH), but there are concerns this can lead to “shirking from home.” We report the results of a WFH experiment at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency. Call center employees who volunteered to WFH were randomly assigned either to work from home or in the office for nine months. Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4% from more calls per minute (attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment). Home workers also reported improved work satisfaction, and their attrition rate halved, but their promotion rate conditional on performance fell. Due to the success of the experiment, Ctrip rolled out the option to WFH to the whole firm and allowed the experimental employees to reselect between the home and office. Interestingly, over half of them switched, which led to the gains from WFH almost doubling to 22%. This highlights the benefits of learning and selection effects when adopting modern management practices like WFH. JEL Codes: D24, L23, L84, M11, M54, O31.

Survey results of 1,500 remote workers from the Australian state of New South Wales, taken in August-September 2020 and March-April 2021, which aimed to capture the shift in remote work experiences and attitudes during different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and gain insights on its long term implications.

Maven Remote Work Challenge This is the official dataset for the Maven Remote Work Challenge.

For a chance to win a free annual membership, you need to assess the productivity and morale implications of working remotely and outline an ideal policy for the post-pandemic future, presented in the form of a single page report or dashboard.

Data Source : https://www.mavenanalytics.io/data-playground

The percentage of people who mainly work from home in the United Kingdom reached **** percent in 2020, compared with **** percent in the previous year. Since 1998 the number of people that regularly work from home in the UK has increased by **** million after the number of remote workers reached *** million in 2020.

In these uncertain and difficult times caused by the spread of COVID-19, many of us have been forced to work from home and are required to complete job tasks on the same level of quality (as office). Several researchers argued that in any workplace, employees face positive and negative stressors.

The questionnaire is focused on finding out if employees are facing the same stressors while working from home and to what extent are they aware of these stressors. The research is divided into two stages:

1) This questionnaire

2) A phone interview

The questionnaire takes approximately 5 minutes to complete. The responses will be used exclusively for the purpose of this study.

A survey of 1,500 NSW workers during August and September 2020 (2020 Remote Working Survey) and March and April 2021 (2021 Remote Working Survey), commissioned to understand workers' experiences of and attitudes to remote and hybrid working. To be eligible, respondents had to be employed NSW residents with experience of remote working in their current job. After accounting for unemployed people and those whose jobs cannot be done remotely—for example, dentists, cashiers and cleaners—the sample represents around 59 per cent of NSW workers. Workers answered questions on: • their attitudes to remote working • the amount of time they spent working remotely • their employers’ policies, practices, and attitudes • how they spent their time when working remotely • how barriers to remote working have changed • the barriers they faced to hybrid working • their expectations for future remote working

Data on working population's location of work patterns, well-being and attitudes to future working from home plans broken down by age, sex, income and region. Data are based on the COVID-19 module of the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, collected between 21 April and 16 May 2021.

Social-distancing policies to combat the spread of COVID-19 led to an initial spike in work from home. We use high-frequency cell phone geolocation data to assess how work from home has evolved since then. We show that work from home declined as restrictions eased but remains above pre-pandemic levels. In addition, we find that differences across income, race, and education in work from home that emerged with the pandemic persist a year later.

These figures are experimental estimates of online job adverts provided by Adzuna, an online job search engine. The number of job adverts over time is an indicator of the demand for labour. To identify these adverts we have applied text-matching to find job adverts which contain key phrases associated with homeworking such as “remote working”, “work from home”, “home-based” and “telework”. The data do not separately identify job adverts which exclusively offer homeworking from those which offer flexible homeworking, such as one day a week from home.

It all started with a laptop on a kitchen table. One device, one user, and a Wi-Fi network not built for enterprise-grade security. Multiply that by millions, and you begin to grasp the scale of the remote work cybersecurity challenge. As the boundaries between home and work blur, so do...

Analysis of 150k employees reveals WFH increases work hours by 40% but reduces productivity. Key data on remote vs office performance metrics for tech leaders.

Hybrid models of working are on the rise in the United States according to survey data covering worker habits between 2019 and 2024. In the second quarter of 2024, ** percent of U.S. workers reported working in a hybrid manner. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a record number of people working remotely to help curb the spread of the virus. Since then, many workers have found a new shape to their home and working lives, finding that a hybrid model of working is more flexible than always being required to work on-site.