Personal and Work-Life Balance 2021 - Remote Working

This publication “Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey – Remote Working“ is the third and final publication of a series of three publications presenting the results of the Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey. The Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey collects information on how we balance the different aspects of our lives, including work and our personal life.

The data in this publication was collected as part of the Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey which was carried out for the first time in the third quarter (July to September) of 2021. The results of the survey will be published as a series of three publications being published during the month of April. The first of these publications, was published on Tuesday 5^th April, and presented the Main Results of the survey, although were a subset of all the data collected in the survey. The second publication in the series Job and Life Satisfaction and Barriers to Work covered job and life satisfaction and work-life balance, and also covered barriers to work for those not currently in employment. Today’s publication on Remote Working is the third and final publication in the series of publications of the results of this survey and is a subset of the main data collection for the Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey.

The Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey was carried out in Quarter 3 2021, when there were varying levels of COVID-19 restrictions. The advent of COVID-19 would have seen an increase in remote working and this survey asked respondents about their availing of remote working during the 12 months prior to interview (since Quarter 3 2020) and also their availing of remote working pre COVID-19. This publication today covers employees’ availing of remote working and the factors such as size of firm, occupation, etc., that might influence the availability of remote working for workers.

• Almost four in ten employees were remote working at some point during 2021. Of those remote working, employees in the Education sector had the highest level of remote working – 86.2% compared with workers in the construction sector (12.0%). See Table 2.1.
• One in twelve (8.2%) workers had availed of some form of remote working pre COVID-19. Of these, almost three in ten (29.9%) were working in the Information and communication economic sector, compared with the Human health and social work activities sector (2.1%). See Table 2.1.
• Professionals were most likely to have worked remotely (62.7%) in the previous 12 months, followed by Managers, directors, and senior officials and Associate professional and technical in joint second place (50.7%). By comparison, Skilled trade workers who had the lowest level of uptake of remote working (2.8%). See Table 2.1.
• Full-time workers in large organisations were most likely to have worked remotely in the twelve months prior to interview - nearly half (48.9%) of full-time workers working in organisations of 100 people or more had worked remotely at some point during the previous year compared with just over three in ten (31.3%) of full-time workers in organisations of less than 20 people. See Table 2.2.
• The most commonly used remote working space is the home – over three quarters (75.6%) of employees who were working remotely in the four weeks prior to interview, were working at home for part of their working time. See Table 3.1.
• Many Information and communication sector workers were already remote working pre COVID-19. Nearly three in ten (28.8%) workers in the Information and communication sector (who were remote working to some degree during COVID-19) had worked 1 to 3 days remotely before the COVID-19 pandemic. See Table 4.1.
• Of those who had availed of remote working in the twelve months prior to interview, over four in ten (40.9%) had worked most of the previous four weeks remotely. Of these nearly four in five (78.9%) worked completly from home. See Tables 4.2 and 4.4.
• Life and job satisfaction highest for those working mostly from home. Workers who were working mostly from home with a mix of office, hub or travel were most satisfied with both their job and life as a whole. The majority (94.2%) were satisfied/very satisfied with their life, marginally greater than those who remote worked completely from home (93.6%). See Table 4.5.

For further information see tables on PxStat