Daily Times

Eighty-two per cent of people are expecting to have more flexible work-from-home policies post-coronavirus, according to a new survey that analysed the impact of the pandemic on work culture globally.

Meanwhile, 71 per cent of those surveyed said they desire to continue working from home, at least part-time, Microsoft revealed in its Work Trend Index report.

“We see this blending of work and life as a durable workplace trend with potential for technology to help ease some of the challenges that come with it,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365.

“Our goal was to uncover both good and challenging aspects of remote work so we can accelerate product development in the right areas, foresee how work will change in the future and help our customers thrive in this new world of work,” he added.

Flexible work is evolving rapidly, its permutations are proliferating you could say it has gone viral. Flexibility is the umbrella term used to describe any role that breaks the traditional norm of a rigid 9-to-5, five-day week structure. At its core stand individuals with potentially greater freedom over when, where or how to fulfill their particular roles. The ability to work from home and the emergence of digital office rental services has led to changing attitudes around where people should work and whether they should stick to the traditional nine-to-five working hours.

If you offer workers the chance to work where they need to be, and not where they are told to go to, it completely transforms their view of the company, they are more productive. If they can work at an office near to where they live or near to where they need to be, it’s totally transformational.”

The report found that people are working more not only in the morning and evening hours, but also on the weekends. Team chats outside of typical working hours have increased between 15 per cent and 23 per cent during lockdown and spiked to nearly 200 per cent on weekends.

The research also pointed at the importance of taking regular breaks between meetings or punctuating long meetings with small breaks when possible.

It said that brainwave markers associated with overwork and stress are significantly higher in video meetings than in other works such as writing emails or speaking to a co-worker face-to-face.

“COVID-19 case numbers will need to be monitored but the market seems to have developed a degree of flock immunity to these, at least in terms of headline risk,” Wilson remarked.

“There is likely to be some disruption to activity in China and possibly globally based on the spread of the virus to date and the travel restrictions and business closures that have already been imposed,” Powell told reporters at a press conference, though he acknowledged that it’.