There is a strong appetite among workers who began working from home during Covid to continue with a mixture of working from home and the office, the latest Irish Times/Ipsos poll has found.
The findings suggest that for many people the pandemic has changed their working habits permanently.
Of the 61 per cent of respondents to the poll who said they were currently working, almost four in 10 (38 per cent) said they had begun working from home during the pandemic.
Of these, almost half (48 per cent) said they were still working remotely some of the time, a quarter (25 per cent) said they were still working remotely, while just over another quarter (27 per cent) said they were “back working in my place of work all of the time”.
Among workers who are currently working remotely some or all of the time, most expect to continue to work from home some of the time.
Just 11 per cent said they would “go back to working in my place of work all of the time”, while 12 per cent said they would continue to work remotely all the time.
More than three-quarters (76 per cent) said they would “continue to work remotely some of the time”. This rises to 81 per cent among respondents in Dublin and to 82 per cent of the wealthiest AB voters.
Among those who are currently working remotely some of the time, the figure rises to 88 per cent – suggesting that the vast majority of people who moved to hybrid working arrangements during the pandemic will continue with these arrangements.
The poll was conducted among 1,200 adults at 120 sampling points across all constituencies on April 11th and 12th. Respondents were interviewed at their own homes. The accuracy is estimated at plus or minus 2.8 per cent.
