A new survey by recruiter Hays reveals that around 41% of NI employers expect their workforce to use a "hybrid" model of partly remote and partly in-office work.
While the NI Tech sector has now adapted to working from home, many firms across Northern Ireland have been working toward getting back to their offices. Those that are re-opening their offices are putting their staff's safety first and finding that this often means reducing the capacity in the office space by up to 50%.
Faced with this, many employers now expect their staff to remain at least partly remote for the foreseeable future. Around 41% of employers surveyed by Hays said that in six months' time they expect their workforce to be using a kind of hybrid model in which they're spending part of their time working at home and part of it in the office.
Support for working at home has boomed since the pandemic hit, but only 2% of the companies surveyed expect their entire workforce to remain fully remote six months from now and only 8% of employees reportedly want to be working remotely long-term. The vast majority of companies (60%) are already returning to the workplace in some capacity, with 26% making returning to the office entirely voluntary.
The statistics support the idea that Northern Ireland's businesses want to get back to the office, but that they want to keep the flexibility employees have enjoyed in the past several months. It looks instead as if Northern Ireland is headed for a new "hybrid" employment model where employees spend some of their time in the office and some working from home. Around 51% of the NI-based employers surveyed are changing their long-term flexible working policies as a result of the pandemic.
John Moore, Managing Director of Hays in NI, commented: "There’s been a seismic shift with demands for sustained flexible working and this looks set to continue on a scale never seen before. Yet the responses indicate that many people have had enough of working solely at home. The greatest demand is for a new hybrid way of working – staff want a balance between office life and working remotely, which is now far closer in their sights than ever before."
Source: Written based on press release
