How companies think the pandemic will affect work in 2021
There’s no doubt the coronavirus pandemic changed how people work.
The biggest shift was the availability of work-from-home options at employers. Around 90% of employers are offering remote work to some or all employees today, up from around 33% last year, according to a survey of employers by MRA – The Management Association.
“While the pandemic has changed business as we know it, many organizations were able to quickly and successfully adapt and are redefining their new normal moving forward into 2021,” Zach Day, MRA’s director of surveys, custom research and analytics, stated in a news release.
“This shows the true strength of our character and our ability as both employers and employees to push through any crisis.”
MRA surveyed 520 of its member organizations in November. The majority of companies in the survey have between 50 and 500 employees with 47% in manufacturing. The Waukeshabased employer association has more than 4,000 employers in Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota.
The ongoing pandemic will continue to affect the workforce, according to the MRA survey. For example, 17% of remote workers will continue to work from home through mid-2021. Employers also plan to continue rotating employees’ time in the office, working from home and other long-term strategies.
While the vaccine has limited availability right now, companies are starting to think about what will happen once health care workers and other high-risk populations are vaccinated.
Around 15% of employers in the survey said they plan to offer onsite COVID-19 vaccine clinics when it is available. For the annual flu vaccine, nearly half of all employers in the survey offer on-site clinics.
About 5% of employers in the survey said they were exploring whether they could mandate the COVID-19 vaccine.
State government does not have plans to mandate COVID-19 vaccination at this time. Employers of health care workers have also said they don’t plan to mandate the shot, at least for now.
The pandemic caused a corresponding economic downturn. Less than half — 42% — of employers in the MRA survey implemented layoffs in 2020.
“We take this as a positive sign that many employers are maintaining or even exceeding pre-COVID business levels, which also gives increased hope for the 2021 business outlook,” Day said in the news release.