35% of people answered that their work load has not been affected by recent events, and a further 28% said they have significant capacity, meaning that much of the media focus has rightly been on how well many people have adapted to the “Working from Home” experiment.
However, 22% said they had only some capacity for work, and 14% said they had no capacity for work/study. Whilst much of this latter group may relate to furloughed staff, and so will bounce back once businesses come back, this won’t apply to all of this group, and indicates that some businesses may have challenges with how some of their staff can work optimally from home.
Whilst supporting home office conditions may be seen by some bosses and company leaders as not their concern, with the drive towards greater flexible working on the back of Covid, ensuring productivity from key staff, wherever they may be, should be considered a key success factor, especially if there is an opportunity to reduce fixed overheads from office rentals.
This point is emphasised by the fact that households shared by adults (typically but not exclusively how younger workers live) have the lowest percentage of full capacity working of all household types at 29%. It is therefore the youngest generation of current workers – the future of the company workforce - who are most greatly impacted in terms of productivity.
COVID-19 has affected workloads and effectiveness unevenly across the workforce. Forward-thinking business leaders should therefore consider ways in which to facilitate effective home office environments for all employees, in terms of age group and living scenarios, to get the most out of their staff, and to maintain staff satisfaction and retention; this is particularly relevant for millennials, who are less likely to be loyal to a company, especially if they don’t meet their emotional needs.
