World of work: Study: Workers worldwide like working from home

After two and a half years of the corona pandemic, the home office has become the most common workplace worldwide. According to a survey of economists published by the Ifo Institute, an average of 1.5 days of home office per week is common across all sectors and employees in the 27 countries surveyed. Germany is just below that at 1.4 days. According to the Ifo, it is 1.3 days in France, 1.6 days in the USA and 1.1 days in Japan.

“Never before has any event turned working life upside down so comprehensively in such a short time,” commented Ifo scientist and co-author Mathias Dolls. The German scientist worked with colleagues from five other research institutions in the USA, Great Britain and Mexico, including the two US universities Stanford and Princeton. The results are average values, since working from home is not possible in some industries, Dolls said on request.

The surveys were carried out by the British market research institute Respondi. The results are based – after adjustment – on a total of around 36,000 answers, which were asked in two rounds in summer 2021 and in January/February of this year.

The survey brought to light another international common ground: the employees prefer the home office to their bosses. On average across all 27 countries, the 36,000 respondents would like to work 1.7 days a week at home. Companies would like to see their staff in the office more often: On average, companies only plan or want their employees to work from home for 0.7 days per week.

According to the survey, South Koreans work from home the least often: half a day a week. However, in several countries, including South Korea, a particularly large proportion of workers with high educational qualifications participated. Therefore, the results are not equally comparable for all countries.