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.

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.

In 2020, approximately *** million people worked mainly from home in the United Kingdom, an increase of around **** million people when compared with 1998, when just *** million workers mainly worked from home. As a share of all workers in the United Kingdom, this was the equivalent of **** percent of the UK workforce, compared with **** percent in 1998. Rise of the hybrid workforce More recent figures on working location trends in Great Britain, indicate that as of June 2025, around ** percent of workers had worked from home exclusively in the last seven days, with a further ** percent only travelling to work. Just over a ******* of British workers, however, had both worked from home and traveled to work in the last seven days. Although less common than only travelling to work, hybrid working has generally been more popular than only working at home since around Spring 2022 and is possibly one of the most enduring impacts that COVID-19 had on the labor market. Demographics of homeworkers While advancements in internet connectivity and communication software have enabled more people to work from home than ever before, there are still obvious disparities in the share of homeworkers by industry. Over **** of the UK’s agriculture workforce in 2020 regularly worked from home, compared with just *** percent of those that worked in accommodation or food service. In the same year, the region with the highest share of people working from home was South West England at **** percent, while Northern Ireland had the lowest at just *** percent.

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 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.

In a May 2020 survey, the majority of employees from the United States said that they would like to continue working from home for at least one day a week after the coronavirus outbreak comes to an end. Only ** percent responded that they wouldn't want to work from home for even one full day a week following the global pandemic.

In June 2025, approximately 12 percent of workers in Great Britain worked from home exclusively, with a further 26 percent working from home and travelling to work, while 43 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.

In a survey conducted in October 2020, ** percent of respondents from the Asia-Pacific region stated to have worked from home more than once a week even before remote work implementations due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

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.

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.

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.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, over ** percent of Canadian employees were working primarily at external workplaces. This decreased to ** percent during the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, only *** percent of employees were working remotely for most of the time before the outbreak of the pandemic. The share of employees working both in home office and at their workplace, did not change significantly, declining from ** percent to ** percent.

According to a survey conducted in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in March 2020, 54 percent of respondents stated that they did not have work from home plans so far. In the same survey, Bahrain had the largest share of respondents who stated that they had remote work plans among the region, at 38 percent.

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.

As of September 2022, around *** percent of workers in the United States worked from home sometime in the past four weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This accounts for those who teleworked, or worked at home, specifically because of the coronavirus pandemic and does not include those who worked from home before the pandemic.

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.

During a June 2020 survey, participants were asked why their work hours had shifted while working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Among the respondents, **** percent answered that heavy phone usage had caused them to have different hours that they would in office. Additionally, **** percent said that a hangover was keeping them from their normal hours.

With 56 percent, most respondents state they have been working remotely for less than a year. This is the case as many employees around the world had been pushed out of the office and into their home for work due to COVID-19. As a result of these circumstances, many of these employees identify as remote workers now.