New Survey Finds That Home Working Is The Most Productive Working Environment
New research compiled by Adobe has found that workers feel that home working is a more productive environment to work in compared to their employer's premises.
In a survey involving 2000 respondents, 39% stated that home working is their most productive location, whilst 22% said that they were more productive at the office.
Reasons Why Workers Prefer To Work From Home
In terms of those who said that they prefer to engage in home working, the biggest contributory factor mentioned was not having to commute to work (62%). Other significant factors cited include:-
- quiter, with less distractions (56%)
- Able to set own schedule (52%)
- Able to accept deliveries (48%)
Builds Upon Previous Research
The finding that workers feel more productive when home working builds upon previous research, which indicates that the productivity benefits are greatest when home working forms part of a hybrid working arrangement. For instance:-
- A report by Standford into 16,000 staff employed by the company, Ctrip, over a 9 month period found that there was a productivity increase of 13%
- A survey conducted by TalkTalk found that 58% of workers reported that they were more productive working at home
- A survey carried out by ConnectSolutions found that those who were able to work remotely, at least part of the time, were 77% more productive, with 30% able to complete tasks in less time and 24% able to produce more work in the same allotted time
Wasted Time
In a recent article, we highlighted that new research published by Wrike had found that ‘knowledge workers’ wasted time amounted to the equivalent of 89 days per annum due to work complexities created by the digital era, which ultimately cost businesses around £50 million per annum. The new report produced by Adobe also focuses upon the issue of time wasted at work. Indeed, Adobe found that workers mentioned the following as major time wasting problems:-
- Providing colleagues with updates (49%)
- A high volume of emails (48%)
- Unexpected telephone calls (43%)
- Eleventh hour meetings (34%)
- Administration (33%)
Wasted time was found to be just as big an issue in relation to home working, as it was with working from the office
Reaction
Commenting upon the findings on home working, Brian Green from Adobe stated: "Many of us have more flexibility and freedom to set our own working routine than ever before, yet our utopian ideal of working on our own terms still remains under threat. This is due to an inability to overcome productivity challenges regardless of where we choose to work."
Home Working Requests Set To Become A Legal Right In The Netherlands
The Netherlands is set to become one of the first countries to make home working requests a legal right. The legislation that would facilitate that has just passed the lower house of the bicameral parliament, the House of Representatives, and is now awaiting approval by the Senate.
Under the new legislation, should an employee make a request to work from home and their profession allows it, then the employer must carefully consider the request and if rejected, must provide reasons as to why the request was declined.
The new Dutch position contrasts sharply with that in the UK where employees only have the right to request flexible working (which could include a request to work from home) after 26 weeks of continuous service. Whilst it had been anticipated that this would become a day 1 right under a new Employment Bill, there was no Employment Bill included in the Queen's Speech.
Senna Maatoug, a GroenLinks member of the Dutch House of Representatives stated that the prospective new legislation is an "important step. Due to the corona period, we have seen that hybrid working has advantages for a very large part of the employees. It gives them the opportunity to find a better work-life balance and to reduce travel time."
