Employee resistance against back to office working

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The past year has seen a significant increase in the amount of homeworking taking place. Before the pandemic, around 5% of those in employment worked from home, whereas during the pandemic this number increased to around 43% of workers.

Homeworking was trialled ‘en masse’ in possibly the worst set of circumstances. It took place in a time of severe social isolation where there were none of the usual levels of social balance in life, due to the social distancing and lockdown rules in place. Added to this, the schooling and nursery systems were shut down, meaning many had to balance childcare and home-schooling responsibilities alongside work, at a level they had never experienced before.

In many ways, people have trialled homeworking in a more than suboptimal manner. Nevertheless, employers who are starting to signal a push back to office working, or even to hybrid ways of working, are experiencing a lot of resistance from their employees.