Survey: Majority Believe that the Corona Crisis has Triggered a Home Office Trend

Many employees who normally work in an office have discovered the advantages of the home office for themselves during the crisis. A worldwide survey of 500 employees conducted by OTRS Group revealed that the vast majority of those surveyed (80 percent) enjoy working from home. This is despite the fact that 68 percent said that working from home was an unfamiliar situation for them.

Saving on travel creates free time and enables employees to work closer to their families

The most frequently cited reason for preferring the home office is to save the commute to the office in order to have more time for other things (20 percent). The second most frequently cited reason is the proximity to family during work (19 percent).

Respondents who feel uncomfortable working at home cited various reasons for this: 12 percent simply prefer to see their colleagues in person, while 11 percent find it difficult to see what their colleagues are working on in the home office. Nine percent miss appropriate means of communication and seven percent state that their technology does not work properly.

Majority believes in a clear trend for more home office and digitalization

It seems that the majority of employees not only enjoy working in a home office, but are also convinced that this will continue to be possible in the future. The vast majority of those surveyed (83 percent) believe that the Corona crisis has opened up a new corporate trend towards more digitalization and working from the home office. A clear majority (61 percent) is also in favor of a law establishing a right to work from a home office, as is currently being discussed in Germany.

According to 90 percent, respondents believe that companies will benefit from the change to home office work that has been forced by Corona. Businesses could not only save a great deal of money on office space and business travel, as 38 percent state, but also benefit from more satisfied and relaxed employees (29 percent). The main risk in the home office is seen as a possible loss of team spirit (35 percent).

“The survey illustrates the urgent need of employees to be able to work from the home office in the long term. This result is independent of culture and industry”, says Sabine Riedel, member of the board of OTRS Group and expert for digital transformation. “Whether the right to a home office can be legally anchored is not certain. But we as a company can drive the development forward by accelerating digital transformation and providing employees with efficient tools that are intuitive, save on tedious extra work and allow for a natural exchange among colleagues”.

You can find more information on the benefits of remote support solutions here: http://otrs.com/remote-work-software/

Online survey conducted in May 2020 with Pollfish among 500 office workers (mainly from customer service, IT, office, HR or marketing) from Germany, USA, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico (100 respondents per country).

OTRS Group is the manufacturer and the world’s largest provider of the service management suite OTRS, awarded with the SERVIEW CERTIFIED TOOL seal of approval. It offers flexible solutions for process and communication management to companies of all sizes, saving them time and money. Among its customers are Lufthansa, Airbus, IBM, Porsche, Siemens, BSI (Federal Office for Security in Information Technology), Max Planck Institute, Toyota, Hapag Lloyd and Banco do Brazil (Bank of Brazil).