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.

In 2021, ** percent of respondents currently working at least partially outside the office indicated that their company has a 100 percent remote policy. This is a slight increase from the previous year. Only ** percent of respondents stated that remote work in their company is allowed but not the norm, down from ** percent in 2020. Global shift to new work in 2020 In 2020, the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic led to a shift from work in the office to work from home, to keep the workforce and the community safe. While this created some struggles in the beginning, many organizations and employees have since adapted and are thriving. Many employees appreciate the benefits of working remotely. Accordingly, one in two individuals indicate that the ability to work remotely is an important decision factor for future employment. Companies experiment with hybrid work models As a result, many companies worldwide are updating their policies to accommodate this new way of working. These include a combination of both flexibility on work location and productive in-person and digital collaboration opportunities. For this reason, organizations are not only actively monitoring both employee well-being and productivity but are also evolving operations to support a hybrid workforce.

In a June 2020 survey, **** percent of participants that worked from home during the coronavirus pandemic said that they would like to continue working from home on a permanent basis. Adversely, **** percent said that they would like to return to the office after the outbreak ends.

In August 2025, approximately 14 percent of workers in Great Britain worked from home exclusively, with a further 22 percent working from home and travelling to work, while 41 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.

This statistic shows the frequency of working remotely in 2020. According to the survey, 35 percent of the respondents occasionally work remotely, while 16 percent of them are full-time remote workers.

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.

Before the first coronavirus lockdown in Denmark in March 2020, only four percent of employees in the private sector were working from home on any given day. The share increased significantly during the lockdown, up to 34 percent of all employees, and as of fall 2020, 22 percent were in home office. It is estimated that 90 thousand more people will continue to work remotely in Denmark after workplace restrictions have been abolished.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

According to a survey held in March 2020, ** percent of respondents stated that they do not feel pressure to prove that they are working with the increase in working from home created by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Conversely, only ** percent of respondents reported working more hours.

In a global survey conducted with CIOs, respondents stated that fully remote work will likely transition to hybrid work in the future. About 15 to 16 percent stated their companies’ workforce worked remotely prior to the pandemic, and as of late 2021, 30 percent of respondents expected the workforce to be working remotely permanently. By 2022, 36 percent of respondents expected to be working in a hybrid model permanently.

In 2020, *** thousand people working in the professional, scientific, and technical industries in the United Kingdom worked mainly from home, the highest number of any sector. The industry sector with the highest percentage of homeworkers was agriculture, forestry, and fishing, with over half of that industry's workforce working from home.

After the COVID-19 emergency, when Italians were forced to stay at home and possibly work remotely, many workers returned to their office or habitual workplace. In fact, in 2023, only ****** percent of the employees in Italy were working from home. The share has progressively reduced after 2020, when almost ** percent of workers did home office.

In 2022, around ** percent of respondents stated that their biggest struggle when working remotely was staying at home too often because there they don't have reason to leave. Moreover many people who work from home do not necessarily have a designated workspace, they experience a conflation between their living area and workplace. Most notably, around ** percent of respondents reported loneliness as their biggest struggle with working remotely. As a result, remotely working employees emphasize the importance of finding strategies to balance their private lives with their professional routines. On the other hand, employees also state having less difficulties with collaboration and communication in 2021. This is likely due to the quick cultivation of skills during the 2020 pandemic that allow them to effectively communicate and collaborate with others when working from different locations. Challenges inherent in new work set-ups As employees work from different locations, companies are confronted with the urgency to ease some of the challenges inherent in novel hybrid work solutions. Strategies developed to support remote work include training for employees or expanding information technology infrastructure to ensure that employees can collaborate efficiently from different locations. The future of work Certainly, it is important to take the challenges experienced by employees seriously as the current telework trend is likely to continue and become a common way of working in the future. Addressing challenges head-on in the present will ensure better working conditions in the future.

The percentage of people that usually work from home in the European Union jumped to **** percent in 2020, compared with *** percent in 2019. This sudden increase in homeworking occurred due to social distancing measures introduced by European governments in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Before the pandemic, the percentage of people who sometimes worked from home was already steadily increasing and had reached **** percent in 2019.

Following the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020 and the transition to remote work, the volume of internet searches surrounding employee surveillance companies increased worldwide. In March 2023, the volume of internet searches for the software company DeskTime increased by 232 percent compared to March 2020.

According to a recent survey, 90,000 employees are expected to work from home after the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis ends in Denmark. While around 70 per thousand private sector employees were working remotely before the pandemic, the number was forecast to reach 160 per 1,000 employees after workplace restrictions are abolished. During the crisis in 2020, 460 private sector employees were in home office per thousand employees.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 only **** percent of the respondents primarily worked from home (WFH), which is significantly less compared to the **** percent of respondents who WFH now in the midst of the pandemic. Interestingly enough, respondents answered that many would go back to their respective physical facility or the field after a vaccine is available.

Physical workplaces However, following the COVID-19 pandemic, the physical workplaces will change as the percentage of personnel that will primarily WFH is projected to be ***** percent more than prior to the worldwide pandemic. Other studies have suggested that post-pandemic, almost ** percent of enterprises worldwide are projected to have a distributed workforce, compared to around ** percent before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Distributed workforce A distributed workforce may become the new normal, as it is projected that by 2023, ** percent of the top Forbes Global 2000 companies will have commitments to a hybrid workforce design. It is worth noting that to work distributedly is different than only working remote, as to "work distributedly" assumes that there is not a single central location to work from. Instead, the company is distributed among various working environments. This allows personnel to engage either locally, remotely, in the field, or switching between locations as they please. This permits for a more fluid working environment, as many throughout the world either like or love WFH.

How many private sector employees are working from home in Denmark because of the coronavirus? According to a survey conducted by Dansk Industri, around one in three private sector employees worked from home in March, 2020. In detail, 41 percent of the respondents were from the Capital Region of Denmark, while another 30 percent lived in the Central Denmark Region. Only 16 percent of private sector employees from the North Denmark Region worked from from home.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

This statistic shows challenges of working remote in 2020. According to the survey, ** percent of respondents indicate managing at-home distractions as the biggest challenges of working remotely.

As of January 2024, several major technology companies, including Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple, have implemented return-to-office mandates requiring employees to be in the office at least three days per week. Interestingly, Zoom, a company that played a significant role in facilitating work-from-home activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, has announced a return-to-office mandate of its own requiring employees to work from the office twice per week. In contrast, X (formerly Twitter) adopted an office-only policy for their employees since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, requiring all X employees to work from the office the entire work week.

In December 2022, over 40 percent of Norwegians were working from home at least once a week. Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the use of home office rose sharply in the spring of 2020 before falling gradually since. Even though the country lifted most of its restrictions in February 2022, the pattern of using home office and a more hybrid module seem to have established itself in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The first case of COVID-19 in Norway was confirmed on February 26, 2020. For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Fact and Figures page.