
Employees’ Preference for Working From Home Has Reached a ‘New Normal’
- Volume XXII, Issue 67
- Executive Insights
New survey reveals findings consistent with June survey, indicating the lower preference for commuting post-COVID is now established after four months of new working practices
L.E.K. Consulting conducted the fourth in a series of surveys (via Toluna) asking whether workers new to working from home would like to continue the arrangement or return to their prior workplace after the pandemic has eased. For the first time, these results have stabilised following three months of growth in the proportion of respondents who wanted to continue working from home. Our previous results are available for each of April, May, and June.
By mid-July, U.K. restrictions have eased substantially, including the re-opening of pubs and restaurants and the resumption of domestic and some international travel. In addition, the U.K. government has announced that the advice encouraging working from home (for those who can) will no longer apply from 1 August, with employers having greater discretion regarding working practices. Public transport is also no longer limited to essential journeys. As more elements of consumers’ pre-lockdown lives are restored – including a potential return to the workplace in two weeks – could this change their preferences relating to working from home?
L.E.K.’s survey (conducted on 17-20 July) showed c.65% of respondents that are new to working from home reporting a preference for either working fully or partly from home in the future, with results quite consistent with findings from June (see Figure 1). After three months of evolving preferences, this suggests employees have now established their habits and attitudes towards working from home. These results are the best indication yet of the ‘new normal’ for employee preferences, providing a basis for transport operators and employers more broadly to think about capacity planning and demand management.
The July findings also provide insights on how working-from-home preferences vary with demographic factors:
Implications for operators
The largest segment is “Back to normal” – the slight majority of passenges who want to return to pre-COVID life for all journey purposes. The other segments capture new habits and attitudes introduced by lockdown. For example, “Digital expats” are those who now have a ‘habit’ of working from home and will commute less in the future, while “Safety first” is those who remain cautious about travel in the future, reducing journeys across all purposes. Operators must re-think their current segmentation to capture these new dimensions. Only through such an exercise can they understand the likely shape of the recovery and identify areas for action to help stimulate and shape demand.