Q3 2020: Remote working can lead to higher productivity and motivation

Remote working doesn’t lead to less productivity or motivation. According to a recent study by Michael Page it has the opposite effect, as many employees who work from home report that they are more motivated, productive and satisfied than before.  

Around 40.0% of the employees in Switzerland say their productivity stayed the same while working remotely, and more than 49.2% of employees even think their productivity increased.   

Remote working also didn´t lead to less motivation, on the contrary, more than 35.4% of employees even felt more motivated. Almost 49.2% of employees felt just as motivated as they felt working from the office.  

Employees are equally positive about their job satisfaction: more than 40.0% of all employees were just as satisfied with their work as they were before the lockdown, and 38.5% were even more satisfied.   

If it´s up to the employees and job seekers remote working will become the new normal. More than 65.2% of the workforce would like to have the possibility to work remotely full time.  

That being said, even if they had the choice, many employees would still come to the office for the most part of the working week. Only 13.3% would choose to work remotely for 4 days or more. Given the choice, the majority (53.3%) would choose to work from home 1 or 2 days per week.   

Almost 72% of all employees and job seekers expect that companies will be more open to remote working policies than they were before the COVID crisis.    

The question is if the companies will listen to their employees and grand their wish to work more from home then they used to do before the crisis. Although most companies also had flexible working policies in place before COVID, in general the rule was to work from the office.   

Before the crisis 61.1% of all employees could only work from home occasionally or not at all. Although numerically quite balanced, the minority (39.1%) of employees had the freedom of choice to work remotely.  

Due to the lockdown the number of employees working remotely increased dramatically. Of all the respondents to the survey 59.0% worked remotely. The only people not working from home were those without a job, or with the sort of job that didn´t allow working remotely, for example in a storehouse or a shop. 

Michael Page surveyed all job applicants through our website for a month, to try and understand the effect the recent crisis had on their personal and professional lives, the support they got from their company, what they did to make the best of the situation. The survey was filled out by 210 job seekers in Switzerland.