Survey reveals in-office employees feel less happy, tend to resign in next six months
A survey to find out the mental well-being of the working professionals after companies resumed ‘work from office’ has revealed that it has started to decline once again. According to a report titled Happiness Index Report, return-to-office policies are negatively impacting white-collared employees’ happiness.
The report released by uKnowva, found that 98% of the surveyed employees worked from the office in Jan 2022, as compared to 83% in June 2022. On January 2022, people who were working from home were 29% happier than people working from the office. It further revealed that on June 2022, only 6% of employees working from the office were happier as compared to those working from home. The report also showed that female employees still prefer the work-from-home arrangement as compared to their male counterparts who had a slightly higher preference for working from the office.
It’s not just happiness but people who are returning to work are also complaining that it can negatively affect their mental health.
Earlier, a report by McKinsey in 2021 involving 2900 people also revealed that one-third of them who had just returned to office admitted that going back to office had a negative impact on their mental health. While for some employees, it is the difficulty to give up the habits that were formed during the pandemic; for others, it is the prospect of facing insensitive comments, slights and cliques.
“The remote work was initially taken up by employers due to the pandemic, but after more than two years into the pandemic, remote working has become the new normal. Remote work enables employees to choose their preferred environment for working and being productive. This might explain why remote workers are substantially more productive and happier than their in-office counterparts. Women prefer to work from home as during pandemic they were able to manage their house and work without having to travel or be away from the family. Women are now either leaving their jobs due to flexibility issues or are once again juggling between the responsibilities of work & home” said Vicky Jain, Founder and CEO, uKnowva, a 360-degree cloud-based & mobile-enabled business software that helps to scale and automate everyday business operations
“As per our cognitive intelligence report, 65% of these unhappy employees are most likely to resign from their jobs in next six months and 57% will be women. To avoid this great resignation and retain employees, companies to implement a robust employee engagement and wellness program to better assist employees to acclimatise with the work from office mode” added Jain.