By Fifty-eight percent of employees will leave their jobs if employers require them to return to the office and stop working remotely, a survey by Flexjobs found.
Among employees’ top worries about returning to the office include exposure to Covid-19, having less work flexibility and a decrease in work-life balance, the study said.
Of those polled, 65 percent would prefer to continue with remote work on a full-time basis after the pandemic ends, while a third of workers want a hybrid work arrangement, according to the survey. In addition, 38 percent of workers are saving about $5,000 annually by telecommuting, while one in five report saving about $10,000 a year.
If employees secured a permanent remote-work option, 37 percent said they would consider relocating, the poll found. They cited quality of life, lower cost of living and better climate as factors that would spur them to move.
“I’m not surprised to see that more than half of people working remotely during the pandemic appreciate its benefits to such a strong degree that they would leave their current jobs in order to keep working from home,” FlexJobs CEO Sarah Sutton said in the study. “The landscape of remote work has permanently changed as a result of Covid-19 and its impact will be felt in the job market and the workplace into the foreseeable future.”
Flexjobs, a job-search site, surveyed more than 2,100 people who worked remotely during the health crisis. About three-quarters of respondents were located in the U.S. and Canada, and 24 percent lived outside of the U.S. and Canada.
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