Covid-19: Majority in NI 'want to keep working from home'

A majority of workers in Northern Ireland would like to work from home even after pandemic restrictions are fully lifted, a survey has suggested.

YouGov surveyed 1,000 local workers online during August, weighted to give a representative sample of adults in work.

It was carried out for the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development.

The survey suggests that of those working fully from home, only 3% wanted to return to their office full time.

It asked employees: "Once social distancing measures and other Covid-19-related restrictions are fully relaxed, how often, if at all, would you like to work from home?"

Almost a third of employees (32%) said their job could not be done from home.

Just over 40% said they would like to work partly from home, 16% favoured working fully from home and 8% said they would not want to work from home at all.

Of those working partly from home, more than 80% said they wanted to continue that arrangement.

Among those working fully from home, there was an even split between those who wanted to continue with that and those who wanted to do some of their work in the office.

The survey also found wide variation in home working by occupation, management level, salary or social grade.

It suggests that while 80% of board-level managers worked fully or partly from home, this number falls to 41% of those without any management responsibility.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) said "the differences by salary are even starker" with 69% of people earning up to £20,000 never working from home compared to just 12% of people earning £40,000 and above.

The organisation added that "this underlines the importance of other forms of flexible working (for example, flexi-time, compressed hours, job-sharing) to be made available by employers".