Results of survey on working from home during the corona crisis

In the future, 74% respondents would like to continue spending some of their time working from home

Respondents think that 66% of the work they do could be done from home. This percentage varies between institutes and depends on the necessity of having laboratories or sets of instruments in order to do their work. Of the respondents, 74% want to continue working from home for an average of 43% of their working hours. 38% of the respondents would like to do so on set days and 56% would choose flexibility in the days they work from home.

The advantages of working from home mentioned were: being able to organise one’s own time; the ability to concentrate better; less traveling time; being able to work faster; a better work-life balance; and flexible working hours.

The disadvantages of working from home mentioned were: lack of social and informal contacts; less effective transfer of information; too little space at home to set up a good workspace; less scope for giving and receiving feedback; the blurring of lines between work and personal life; no access to certain necessary facilities; distractions at home; and less physical exercise.

Suggestions made included: continue to allow people to work from home full time or part time; provide good facilities for working from home (chair, laptop, phone, etc.); optimise working from home by providing better connections/use of software and by making agreements on communication; introduce a financial contribution for costs incurred through working from home (internet, phone, etc.); and optimise the availability of necessary information in connection with work.

Facilities

54% of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with the facilities for working from home. At the same time, respondents mentioned that improvements could be made in facilitating the set-up of workspaces at home. 

Workload and work-life balance

29% of the respondents experienced higher pressure of workload and 20% experienced lower pressure. The amount of work has increased for 18% of respondents and decreased for 13% of respondents since the corona measures were introduced.

Agreements and contact

37% of respondents were keeping to the same working hours as previously when working in the office, at the institute or the university. 39% reported that they had made clear agreements about working from home. That is 27% less than the national benchmark set by the Monitorgroep, the research bureau which conducted the survey at the request of NWO.

Interest shown by managers (69% positive), trust shown by managers (91% positive) and the contact with managers (82% positive) were rated as good, as was the ability to contact colleagues (76% positive).

Social contact with colleagues is a point to be addressed, since 56% mentioned that this had deteriorated. NWO-I will have to see whether this point becomes less important once employees return to the office for part of their working week.

Meetings by video calls were rated as efficient by 59% of the respondents. Nonetheless, respondents reported that there was less social interaction and that video calls are more tiring than physical meetings. The quality of the internet connection is also something that needs to be improved.

Information

A majority of respondents gave a positive score for the provision of information about important developments in the organisation and the information they required to do their work well.

Effects

Working from home has had a slightly positive effect on concentration, efficiency and quality of work, productivity and moments for resting and recovering. It is noticeable that employees experienced major improvements in their autonomy and ability to organise their tasks independently at a time of their choice.

Working from home has had a slightly negative effect on the work-life balance and on happiness at work. There is a visible negative effect on work satisfaction and how work and workload is experienced. There is also a negative effect on cooperation and a highly negative effect on building relationships with colleagues. 24% of respondents mentioned that the workload has increased, while for 15% of respondents, the workload has decreased. In contrast to the 29% of respondents who reported that they felt less work satisfaction, 21% of respondents reported that their work satisfaction has improved.

Management

Managers reported that remote management requires more effort and that they do not like conducting difficult conversations in video calls. A selection from their responses: it is more difficult to resolve conflicts; sensitive conversations are trickier; in general, video calls work well; employees who work from home require more support; contact with fellow team members is not as effortless; it is much more difficult to motivate and inspire people remotely; you miss important signals from the workplace; employees are slower to make contact to discuss matters; getting used to it more now after a challenging start.

Read the survey

If you work at an NWO Institute, then you can find the results of the survey on your local intranet. If your institute does not have intranet, or if you work in a university workgroup (BUW) or at the NWO-I office, then please contact Ghislaine de Meij (P&O NWO-I). 

Follow-up

NWO, NWO-I and the NWO Central Works Council (COR NWO) will examine the results of this survey and consider whether our views on working from home and elsewhere need to be changed, even after corona.

 

Newsletter Inside NWO-I, September 2020