In a June 2020 survey, participants that worked from home during the coronavirus pandemic were asked if they believed they were more productive at home than in the office. Among the respondents, **** percent answered that yes, they thought that working from home was allowing them to accomplish more than they would in an office environment.

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.

The majority of respondents, with 57 percent, report that they are more productive when working remotely, compared to working in the office before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Surprisingly, only 17 percent of respondents from the tech industry felt that they were less productive working from home. These results are rather interesting and may have implications for the future of the tech industry and its business professionals' working environments.

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.

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

According to a survey conducted on work from home in India, majority of the employees working in IT/ITeS sector stated that they missed their office environment due to COVID-19 pandemic as of August 2020. Despite working from home, about ** percent of the employees stated that there was no change in their productivity and performance.

As surveyed in 2020, ** percent of Vietnamese respondents claimed that they worked very productively from home. On the other hand, ***** percent stated that they were not very productive when working from home.

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.

Amidst the COVID-19 outbreak, home office has been one of the main structural changes implemented by companies in order to limit the spread of the coronavirus and its disease. Among employees working from home in Mexico, more than ** percent of respondents considered having a high or very high level of productivity while in home office, according to an online survey conducted in ********. In addition, according to a ********* survey, almost ** percent of Mexican respondents experienced less stress during the working from home period.

In the final week of March 2020, 2.8 million Canadians were away from their usual places of work and engaging in remote and/or telework to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 (Statistics Canada, 2020). The Government of Canada's Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) were no exception, with most members from the regular force (Reg F), the primary reserve force (P Res), and the DND public service (DND PS) working from home. The COVID-19 Defence Team Survey was administered from April 29th, 2020, and May 22nd, 2020, to gain insight into work, health, and family-related challenges since the onset of the pandemic and change in work arrangements. Responses from five open-ended questions were qualitatively analyzed to determine general themes of concern regarding work, personal, and family related challenges, stress-management and coping strategies, and recommendations for improving the work situation and personal well-being. Given the different roles and conditions of employment, responses of the different groups or “components” of respondents (Reg F, P Res, DND PS) were compared to identify common and unique challenges to inform targeted organizational responses. A total of 26,207 members (Reg F = 13,668, 52.2%; P Res = 5,052, 19.3%; DND PS = 7,487, 28.6%) responded to the survey's five open-ended questions, which yielded a total of 75,000 open-ended responses. When asked about work-related challenges, respondents' most common challenges included dissatisfaction with technology/software, work arrangements, ergonomics, work-life balance, communication within the organization, and the uncertainties regarding career development. In terms of personal and/or family-related challenges, the most common challenges included social isolation, the impact of the pandemic on mental health, school closures and homeschooling, caring for vulnerable family members, and childcare concerns. The most common stress-management and coping strategies included exercise, spending time outdoors, communicating or spending time with family members, household chores/projects, mind-body wellness exercises, and playing games. The most common recommendations made by respondents to improve their work- or personal-related situations included improving technological capabilities, streamlining communication, providing hardware and software necessary to ensure comfortable ergonomics, the provision of flexibility in terms of telework schedules, return-to-work decisions, and the expansion of benefits and access to childcare services. In terms of differences among the components, DND PS personnel were most likely to report dissatisfaction with technological changes and ergonomics, and to recommend improving these technological limitations to maximize productivity. Reg F members, on the other hand, were most likely to recommend increased support and access to childcare, and both Reg F and P Res members were more likely to mention that increased benefits and entitlements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic would be ameliorative. The results of this study highlight several important facts about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on personnel working in large, diverse organizations. For example, advancements in organizational technological capabilities were highlighted herein, and these are likely to grow to maintain productivity should remote work come to be used more extensively in the long-term. This study also highlighted the importance of flexibility and accommodation in relation to individual needs – a trend that was already underway but has taken on greater relevance and urgency in light of the pandemic. This is clearly essential to the organization's role in supporting the well-being of personnel and their families. Clear and streamlined communication regarding organizational changes and support services is also essential to minimize uncertainty and to provide useful supports for coping with this and other stressful situations.

In a report from Capgemini that explored the future of remote working, around ** percent of organizations in France reported an increased level of productivity during the third quarter of 2020 due to remote working.

In a June 2020 survey, participants that worked from home during the coronavirus pandemic were asked what they thought were the greatest sources of distraction. Among the respondents, **** percent said that their smartphones were affecting their productivity during the lockdown. Additionally, **** percent admitted that gaming was keeping them from their daily work responsibilities.

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.

This statistic shows benefits of remote work to the employers in 2020. According to the survey, over ** percent of employers indicate increased productivity as the main benefit of remote work, while only ** percent of them chose increased time zone coverage as the biggest benefit.

In 2022, around 24 percent of respondents who were working remotely worldwide stated that they were working less compared to the previous year, while around 44 percent of respondents reported that they were working more.

According to a survey conducted in South Korea in July 2020, around ** percent of respondents who were workers answered that productivity seemed to increase with the implementation of working from home. Only around two percent of respondents said that productivity did not increase at all.

According to a survey conducted in South Korea in July 2020, the around ** percent of respondents who were human resources managers answered that productivity seemed to increase with the implementation of working from home. Only around **** percent of respondents said that productivity did not increase at all.

According to a survey conducted in South Korea in August 2020, near ** percent of the companies with **** or more employees were supporting working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the source, a majority of respondents said that productivity increased when working from home.

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have begun to implement various forms of hybrid and remote work models for their employees. The companies surveyed supported the continuation of home-based work even after the pandemic, which indicates that this could be implemented in the long term.

In 2020, Polish men were more likely to be less productive when working from home. Twenty-two percent of respondents admitted a decrease in labor productivity as a result of working from home during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Poland.

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