Employees worried about returning to the office post-lockdown are most concerned about work-life balance and the daily commute, rather than their health, according to research from absence intelligence company e-days.

Whereas only a quarter of employees are most worried about potential health implications, results of a snapshot poll of 100 workers show that seven out of ten people are more concerned with the impact to their work–life balance (37%) or the office commute (34%). The research follows the change in government advice on 1 August 2020 meaning employers can make their own decisions about staff returning safely to work.

Respondents were asked to choose between ‘health implications’, ‘commute’, ‘work–life balance’, and ‘routine’ as the area they are most worried about in returning to their place of work. The results come as analysis from US bank Morgan Stanley showed only one-third of UK white-collar employees have gone back to work, lagging far behind their European counterparts, where twice as many have done so. A previous e-days survey showed that one in three UK workers are ‘reluctant to return’ to office spaces at all now that lockdown measures have been eased, and that 63% felt they were more productive working from home anyway.

Steve Arnold, CEO of e-days, commented:

“As more staff return to work, companies need to ensure the time employees do spend in the office is as stress-free as possible. This means being aware of what your staff members’ concerns actually are and how you can help address them. Building in more flexibility to where people do their best work, or making sure that those who like to start earlier or finish later are allowed to do so will also help. And with COVID-19 already restricting how employees spend their free time, managing annual leave to ensure a healthy work–life balance has never been more important.”

Commuting safely: the employer’s role

The CBI and KPMG have put together an in-depth report on commuting beyond the Coronavirus, which considers the role businesses must play in ensuring a safe commute for workers.

It argues that, as long as social distancing is necessary on public transport, employers must continue to play their own part in ensuring that services are not overwhelmed. Using what they have learnt from the crisis about how their employees have adapted to manage their work during lockdown, they can make better decisions about shift times, expectations for in-person attendance, and plans for staff deployment.

“Many firms have had to approach this from a standing start, previously having had little cause to consider questions about how and when their staff travel to and from the work,” the report says. “Now there is a greater need for managers to understand their teams’ footprint on public transport networks, as well as how they can play their own part in supporting demand management on overcrowded routes. This need is likely to grow as more sectors of the economy reopen and a larger proportion of children return to school. As they begin to ask their employees to return to offices and other workplaces, especially in busy urban centres, business owners will need to take into consideration people’s safety concerns. Employers may not be legally liable for their employees’ safety on their journey to work, however, staff will expect them to act responsibly and be flexible.”

The report suggests businesses should undertake regular reviews into their workforce travel patterns, eventually making it common practice, and communicate these findings with local decision makers.

To encourage safe increased use of public transport, employers should reach out to operators and local authorities, explaining how staff and customer demand for these services is likely to change over the coming months.

The pandemic response has imposed new ways of working for the majority of businesses and some of these will be short-term adaptations to enable companies to ‘keep going’ amidst restricted operating conditions. However, coronavirus has also been a catalyst for businesses to look for longer-term efficiencies that will stick beyond the current crisis and into a period when the virus is no longer a factor in most people’s daily lives.

What is clear, the report says, is that even if it were possible, businesses have little desire to revert to all the norms of the pre-crisis economy. Instead they are energised by the opportunity to ‘build back better’ to improve our economy and society to be fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable. For commuting, this means recognising longer-term trends impacting journeys to work and using this as an opportunity to design transport systems that help the UK transition to a better connected, decarbonised and rebalanced future state.

The full report can be accessed here.