UK employees have told us what they want. What should employers do about it?

In March 2020, the UK was plunged into a mass social experiment in remote working. Organisations moved at incredible speed to respond. Within days, practices that had previously seemed unbreakable had been shattered and the extraordinary had become a reality, enabled by a great leap in digital working.

Six months on, how engaged do employees feel? Do they feel productive and valued, or anxious and distant? Are there differences by demographic? And what does it all mean for UK employers?  

BCG has surveyed 2,000 British employees to understand their experience in this remote-working experiment and their aspirations for work in the future. The headline results are striking:

• 82% of those who shifted to working remotely feel they are trusted by their employers to do so.
• 78% feel at least as valued by their employers as they did before the crisis.
• 86% say they’ve experienced positive benefits, including a better work-life balance, improved mental health, and fewer distractions while working.

Of course, there are downsides. In fact, 79% of those who have continued to work have also experienced negative effects, including feelings of anxiety and a lack of human connection. The single biggest challenge being the blurring of boundaries between work and home.

Experiences have also varied significantly between demographic groups and among individual workers:

• Workers below the age of 35, for example, have worried more about the loss of opportunities for relationship building and development and the lack of visibility of their work and progress.
• Caregivers for other adults who have more than five hours of care responsibility per day were four times more likely to report disruptions in their work due to social distancing measures (such as staggered shifts) and inadequate mental health support from their employers.
• Parents performing more than five hours of childcare per day were twice as likely to report being affected by distractions at home and far likelier to feel that boundaries between work and home life have blurred. 

The ups and downs are reflected in responses around productivity as well. Many employees say they can be as productive, or more productive, working at home, particularly for individual tasks. However, 46% said they are more productive on collaborative tasks in the workplace, compared to 19% who said they are more productive on these tasks working remotely. (See exhibit.) 

What do these findings mean for employers?

Senior leaders – many of whom have experienced positive benefits from working remotely – need to be empathetic to individual experiences and invest time in understanding their employees’ different pressures, needs, and aspirations. As they think through how to change the way their organisations work for the longer term, they need to consider which roles and activities are better suited to different models of face-to-face and remote working.

Looking forward, we also find that most employees want a more mixed work model than they had before the crisis. In fact, 58% of all employees currently working who expressed an opinion, whether working remotely or in the office, want a hybrid model of at least some face-to-face time and some remote time. Those who have worked remotely during the lockdown are even more positive about remote working, with 67% wanting a hybrid model, 16% a fully remote model, and just 17% a fully face-to-face model.

How should organisations respond?

Organisations should engage their employees on what has gone well – and what hasn’t – over the last six months, particularly given the immediate need to sustain remote working in response to Government guidance.

Second, they should think about the range of work models they could potentially offer, from fully face-to-face to fully remote and different hybrid models in between. They should then break down the workforce into different ‘job families’, allowing them to consider more closely the nature of the work done by the various individuals and teams.

Organisations should also ask themselves five questions:

1. Where is in-person customer interaction most important?
2. Where do individuals need access to specialised equipment or facilities?
3. What level of supervision or regulatory oversight is needed?
4. How much collaboration and interaction with colleagues is required?
5. How important is creativity and innovation in each role?

In answering these questions for each of their job families, leaders can assess the mix of potential working models for different types of work, including various hybrid models, and how best they can meet individual aspirations within this flexible range of models.

Employees’ views of how they want to work have changed dramatically throughout this mass experiment in remote working. By taking a systematic, thoughtful approach, every organisation can engage its people in reimagining the future, can respond to new aspirations, and can transform the way we work – for good.

How are you and your employees experiencing the pandemic, and how are you balancing the various needs of the workforce? What has worked so far – and what have you learned the hard way? We’d love to hear from you.

We’re developing expanded findings on future work models – more on this soon. In the meantime, further BCG insights on hybrid work models can be found here.

I’d like to thank my colleagues, Benedict Shuttleworth, Christin Owings, Juliana Lisi, Maryam Saleh, Nadia Shamsad, and Joe Boydell, who are working hard on our upcoming full survey report.