WORKSPACE
HOME VS OFFICE
WHERE ARE YOU MOST CONTENT?
Taking the office into our homes has been tricky and definitely had its quirks. And I think it's fair to say that we have taken this on big style; having to adapt to the mammoth task of adding an entirely new, and sometimes uninvited, area to our homes. But as rules are relaxed gradually, and the possibility of returning to the office looms, and indeed some of us have started to return already, I wanted to ask "how do you feel about this?".
There was a mixed bag of responses but one thing came through clearly - home-based working was largely preferred with 89% of you favouring working from home overall.
Let's start with the common difficulties that this has brought. Your biggest challenges faced were separating work and home life and the distractions that this can bring. This made up over 55% of the challanges. Around 20% mentioned the challenges of finding space in the home and how to organise this around other members of family, especially when a quiet area is required for meetings. Over 20% of you found all of these things a challenge.
What did you miss about office life? 67% found that they missed seeing their colleagues with 23% feeling more connected when in the office.
So what were the main benefits for you? 45% loved cutting out the travel time to work (though I didn't ask if this time was used to do more work and finish earlier or just added more work time, or even if you spent the time doing something else). The remaining 55% enjoyed this as well as having a better work-life balance, though this could be a very good consequence of cutting out travel time. You also preferred the more comfortable and familiar environment.
67% of you said you aren't looking forward to returning to the office. I asked for your reasons behind this and here is a selection of what you said:
I like being at home more
More distractions at work
I like the independence
I can enjoy the garden on my breaks
It seems that there are many benefits to working from home, however that lack of in-person connection from how we do things now is definitely a miss for many of us.
It will be interesting to see if we are approaching a form of "hybrid" working; blending office and home based working to finally come up with a reasonable home-life balance that suits us.
Thanks to those who took part in the survey.
The space we work in is important when it comes to our health and wellbeing. We want to feel relaxed and comfortable in a space that provides us with what we need to be able to do our jobs.
Where we work is something many of us have thought about a lot recently. I was intrigued to find out what you like and dislike about yours. I also wanted to find out whether you prefer your home to work in or the office, and why. So let's look at what you said.