Americans are willing to work longer to keep working from home

The pandemic has forced a huge number of people to switch to remote work. While it took a period of adjustment, many are now reluctant to return to the office full time. If anything, this is the case in the United States, where a study commissioned by Prodoscore was conducted to assess the willingness of home workers to return to the environment in which they worked before the pandemic.

While many of America’s leading businesses seek to “get jobs back on track,” not all employees are happy about it. Although 75.6% of Americans have returned or are planning to return to the office, the study showed that the rest are willing to even risk their workplace, just not to do it. In other words, the pandemic prompted them to rethink their long-standing ideas about how you can and should work.

The pre-pandemic workplace is no longer the dominant model in the American business environment. More Americans work in companies that are adopting a hybrid work model (38.3%) than in companies with a traditional full-time office model (37.3%). It is noteworthy that employees, when returning to offices, tend to transfer elements of work from home there. Thus, more than a third (39.2%) dress more casually in the office than before.

The study also showed that Americans are willing to change the terms of the contract in exchange for work from home. In particular, in order to continue working remotely, 28.1% agree to work longer, 16.% are ready for a salary cut, 13.4% are not afraid of the prospect of losing the company’s pension contributions.

What explains the reluctance to return to the office? Americans are reluctant to give up the benefits of a new work-life balance and the associated improvements in physical and mental health. Improvement in physical health while working from home was noted by 43.6% of respondents, improvement in mental health – 36.7%.