First Remote Work Statistics During COVID-19 Pandemic

The study was conducted by Blind, a network of professionals with 3.2 million employees from America's largest companies. An anonymous chat application surveyed more than 2,000 IT specialists who started working from home in March. These included employees from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Expedia, and Uber. As a confirmation, Blind verified that people had corporate email addresses of the employer on whose behalf they were interviewing.

The majority of surveyed technical workers (80%) said they were satisfied with the measures that their companies were taking to ensure their safety. The employees of Google (41%), Uber and Lyft (50% and 56%) were happy least of all. Google later called on other companies to work from home. And in the case of Uber and Lyft, it is possible that IT specialists have shown solidarity with the drivers. That is, they are personally doing fine, but in general, for their workers, the company could do more.

In another Blind survey, which was attended by a little less than 6 thousand people, about 70% said that coronavirus made them very worried about working in the office, and that as the situation was developing, their fear was increasing. So the transition to remote work helped them worry a little less.

The most important outcome of the survey is finding out that about 60% of the nearly six thousand respondents say that the virus has not had a significant negative impact on the productivity of their work. Among the main reasons given for that there is time which is not wasted on travel, cancellation of large technology conferences and more comfortable working schedule. IT experts call loneliness as their main new problem. Almost 53% of respondents from organizations like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Walmart report that their psychological health has worsened due to loneliness. This factor has the highest figures for the employees of Facebook (69.7%), Google (64.3%) and Amazon (57%).

At the same time, 52% of respondents say that now they work more than before. And 40% say that it seems to them that now they should work more intensively than their colleagues from the office.

Another new study shows what will happen to telework after coronavirus. According to Gartner, even after the pandemic, two fifths (41%) of workers are going to continue to work outside the office (instead of the 30% before the pandemic).

The leaders of many companies, including Oracle and Okta, having observed no decrease in productivity with remote work, have already seen this as a great possibiity for savings. They have decided to reduce the size of their offices, leaving some employees to work remotely even after the coronavirus.

According to Oracle founder Larry Ellison, now all 136 thousand employees of his company work remotely, but this does not affect the efficiency of their work. Therefore, management has come to the decision not to rent part of the office property. This will allow Oracle to save significantly.

The same conclusions have been reached at Okta. They say that they planned to expand the office, but quarantine has shown that employees work well at home, so it makes no sense to increase office space.

At the same time, Gartner analysts are warning that although the productivity of remote employees is much higher (48% demonstrate “discretionary efforts,” instead of 35% who have never worked remotely), the risk that such employees will leave is also more significant. Those who have never worked outside the office say they are willing to stay with the company in the future by 13% more often than employees in a remote location. .