Long commutes and costly fares are blamed as only 10% of workers in the capital believe full-time office return is possible.
Londoners are working from home mostly to evade the cost and time of traveling to the office, according to a study that shows many think they are not likely to resume five days in the office again.
Decrease in public transport and the high costs of fares act as a key obstacle to workers traveling daily to the office, while traffic jams and the rising cost of diesel and petrol, which reached a new high this week, make commuting by car unappealing, the survey found.
Only 10% of the workers said they believed they would return to work full-time compared with 73 percent who told researchers from King’s College London that working from home at least once a week would be a permanent aspect of modern life.
Old and young respondents gave the same optimistic response to working from home, as did those who vote Labor and Conservative, although a bigger number of Labor than Tory supporters was approving of home working.
Tara Reich, an expert in human resource management at King’s College business school, said:
“The opportunity to work from home has given many London workers a sense of control that they aren’t keen to give up.”
Among those who say they encountered positive impacts from working from home, escaping the daily commute was seen as the main benefit by 80%, followed by the ability to deal with home-social responsibilities on 66% – with 71 percent of women Londoners mentioning this as a factor compared with 60 percent of men.
Londoners Content With Home Working
The report is supposed to alert the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, and the Transport for London executives who require people to go back to previous levels of commuting from 2023, when the government intends to make the capital’s transport system self-financing.
Other cities, where workers are likely to hold a similarly optimistic opinion of home working, are also likely to witness the results as a blow to building up central shopping districts and plans by bus, tram, and train operators to restore more frequent services.
Most employers have reported that employees would rather work from Tuesday to Thursday in the office and have reported a struggle to resume pre-pandemic levels of office working.
Buy Crypto NowAmanda Jones, a lecturer in organizational behavior at the business school, said:
“Many more people now have experience of working remotely, while organizations and individuals have invested heavily in equipment and training, and those forced to work remotely during the lockdowns have developed remote-working strategies.”
“Consequently, many more people not only have the capacity to work remotely but consider it to be a normal, rather than exceptional and potentially stigmatizing, practice.”
The only worry the respondents disclosed in the survey was towards younger workers, who about half thought would miss out on vital work experience and career opportunities.
This survey of 2,001 people in work found that 56% think senior management wants staff to go to the office more often while only 16% said managers supported home working.
