Even as Technopark gets ready for normal functioning with 100% vaccination, a survey conducted by Prathidhwani, welfare organisation of information technology (IT)employees in Kerala, shows that a majority of the employees prefer the existing work from home arrangement, while another section prefer a hybrid arrangement involving working few days from home and the rest from office.
According to Prathidhwani representatives, more than 3,000 employees from 335 companies in Technopark, Infopark and Cyberpark and a few IT employees from Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad participated in the survey.
The employees were categorised into three groups, with the entry level consisting of those with up to 4 years of experience, the mid level consisting of those with 4 to 8 years of experience and the senior level having experience of above 8 years. Of the participants, 36% were females and 64% were males. As per the survey, 53% of the employees prefer a hybrid model, 36% prefer complete work from home and only 11% prefer work from office.
“Combining the hybrid and work from home percentages, we find that 89% of the employees prefer some level of working from home. This was an unexpected finding for us, as we assumed quite a few would be wanting to come back to office after almost two years of working from home. Going by this trend, the work from home or hybrid model will come up as a requirement from the employee’s side during the recruitment phase,” said Rohit J., member of the Prathidwani’s data team that analysed the findings.
As many as 63% of the males and 61% of the females surveyed said that their work-life balance have improved after the implementation of the work from home system, while the percentages are 50% and 58% respectively to a question on improvement in their physical health.
Increased work hours
Significantly, 79% of the women and 78% of the men said that their working hours have increased in the shift to work from home.
For 48% of the females, stress or mental depression was a problem, while it was 42% for the males. Around 36% of both categories said that they have to now work more on weekends, while around 70% said that they miss the coffee breaks at office. The preference for work from office was more among the entry level employees at 15%. Connectivity issues are a problem for close to 50% of those surveyed, although it is more for the entry-level employees.
