Firms that don’t offer a remote option risk losing staff

A THIRD of Irish office workers would leave their current company if not offered the option to work from home, either part-time or full-time, on a permanent basis, a survey has reported.

The DataSolutions survey, conducted among 500 Irish workers, comes after jobs site Indeed announced that the “vast majority” of its 1,000 staff in Dublin will now be allowed to permanently work from home at least part of the time.

The new study says that 37pc of workers say they are being given the option of splitting their week between the office and home in the long run.

It also says that this includes 34pc of workers who only recently started working from home as a result of the pandemic.

The majority of office workers (69pc) say that they are “satisfied” with future work options being offered by employers, according to the DataSolutions survey. But only half say that their company’s IT strategy was “effective”, with half also saying that their organisation “needs to update its IT strategy for the future”.

While 71pc of respondents say their companies “have invested” in getting the office ready following the pandemic, more than half complain that their organisation has “not allocated” a sufficient budget to allowing workers create a more permanent work-fromhome environment.

Half of those surveyed by DataSolutions say that they have spent their own money on setting up a work-fromhome environment.

Meanwhile, three quarters claim that their productivity levels are either “the same” or “better” when working from home than in the office.

“So far, Irish businesses have done a great job of reacting to the crisis and implementing the makeshift technologies they needed to get by in the here and now,” said David Keating, group security sales director of DataSolutions.

“But there is still a huge amount of indecision about the future, as seen by the fact that 40pc of organisations have not communicated their plans to staff in terms of returning to the office.”