Companies and staff at odds about returning to work post pandemic

About 79% of organisations believe their employees want to work from office, but in reality only 39% would prefer to leave the work-from-home setup and work in an office full time. Meanwhile, only 23% said they were happy working for their employer, according to the 2021 Global Workplace report by Tokyo based global technology company NTT. 

The report revealed significant differences between the perceptions of business leaders and the employees.  

NTT said that business leaders were far more satisfied with adjusting to new work norms, but employees are at a lower level of satisfaction towards the same. 

The NTT study revealed that in comparison to the operations staff, CEOs are 20 % more likely to believe that their organization is effective at managing work hours, and 28% more likely to believe that they are effective at preventing burnout, and an alarming 41% more likely to be satisfied with the employee experience offered by their company. 

On the employee side, only 38% said that their employer valued their health and wellbeing and a lowly 23% said they were ‘very happy’ working for their employer. 

“We found that work-life balance and commute times are now the two biggest factors people look at when deciding where to work, and so performing well on workforce and workplace strategy will be a real competitive advantage.” said Alex Bennett, Global Senior Vice President, GTM Solutions at NTT. 

The employee survey found that 30% would prefer working from home, while an equal percentage would like a hybrid work model, and 39% would like to get back to the office full-time. 

The report took in inputs from 1,146 individuals across 23 countries, with 430 of the respondents from the APAC region.  

While 82% globally said that the new working scenario has challenged organizational performance, 81% agreed that it has been challenging for employees.   

63% of Chief Human Resource Officers admitted that the employee well-being has deteriorated over the course of the pandemic, while 58% of CHROs in the APAC region agree to the same.