It’s been a good couple of months now – so how are you enjoying working from home? Are you missing your colleagues in the office space and sick of juggling the kids with working life? Or are you glad to escape those morning commutes and enjoying some new-found flexibility?
According to Northern Ireland insurtech firm MCL InsureTech, it seems it’s very much a case of the latter rather than the former. Its survey has revealed that 87% of staff wish to work from home in a post lockdown world.
The company, which has 130 employees in offices in Coleraine and Swords, Dublin, surveyed its staff and found 76% were either very satisfied or satisfied with their current work from home arrangement, while 66% suggested they were very confident they can work from home efficiently. Indeed, 85% believe they are just as, if not more, productive when working at home.
Some of the major positives outlined included making savings on personal spend, cutting out the commute and enjoying a better home/life balance.
Indeed just 12% said they did not want to work from home – with social isolation and communication with co-workers seen as the biggest downsides.
“As an online company with cloud-based IT systems our business model has always lent itself to flexible and remote working,” said managing director Gary McClarty (pictured). “While we always had the majority of our workforce office based the COVID-19 crisis forced the business to adopt a 100% remote working model with all divisions of the business from IT, customer services and marketing moving to a remote working model.
“With this current crisis there has been a lot of talk in the press that home working has become a potential game changer in terms of how we will work in the future - among other things the death of the office environment and the daily commute. To see if there was any foundation to this, we conducted a confidential survey of our employees and the results were definitely surprising.
He added: “There are many positives to working from home including the elimination of the daily commute and financial savings. More importantly, it was also mentioned by 70.88% that they had a better work/life balance, felt less stressed and that it contributed to a healthier lifestyle.”
