A new survey from the University of Vermont suggests that interest in working remotely has risen during the pandemic.
One year ago, the Center for Research on Vermont conducted a survey that showed 55% of Vermonters wanted to work from home after the pandemic was over.
Now, 75% of respondents say they expect to work from home more often after the pandemic is over.
“Telecommuting is here to stay,” said Richard Watts, head of the center that conducted the survey. “After people have experienced a year of telecommuting, support for it has grown.”
The survey of more than 400 Vermonters was conducted over two weeks in May and represents “a slice of Vermonters who have the ability to work from home and generally have been during the pandemic,” according to a news release about the results. It was circulated to respondents from the survey last year.
Although the results are not statistically representative of the whole population, the survey “provides some insights into a group that has been telecommuting during the last 14 months,” according to the release.
The Covid-19 pandemic drastically changed people’s working habits, according to the survey. Before March 2020, more than two-thirds of the people surveyed never worked from home. Now, roughly the same percent say they’re working from home five days a week.
In anonymous survey responses provided by UVM, respondents cited better work-life balance, control over their work environment and the lower cost of not commuting.
The vast majority of respondents — more than 85% — said their organization should take steps to enable people to work remotely. People with long commutes were more likely to say their organization should support remote work.
It’s unclear at this point how organizations will respond to this demand. Watts said “conversations are happening at big and small employers all across the state.”
“The new normal is offering remote work,” he said.
Julie Lowell, an employee at Public Assets Institute in Montpelier, would commute from South Burlington most days before the pandemic. She said she had to switch from a “countertop setup” to a full office desk to save her shoulder when she began to work from home full time.
Her organization, too, had to adjust to virtual calls and meetings, but she said in some ways it’s been an improvement: “Some of my coworkers are not in the office, even before the pandemic, and so for us it helps us all really connect much better.”
The biggest benefit for her has been her family’s quality of life, like “actually getting dinner on the table before 7:15 at night,” she said.
A mother of two children under the age of 10, she used to have to scramble every morning to get everyone ready.
She had to do the morning run “for the first time (in a while) yesterday, it was like five bags, and then it was my kids. ‘Do I have everything? What about this, what about this?’” she said. “That kind of mental holding that we do as parents leaving the house is a big relief to not have.”
Chris Campany, executive director of the Windham Regional Commission, said he’s been looking forward to coming back to the office. But his organization has taken an “organic approach” to reopening, recognizing that people need relaxation and family time after 14 months of the pandemic.
Even after, his organization plans to offer more flexibility on working location and hours. Months of evidence have shown that remote work can be offered without compromising productivity, he said.
In the survey, most people said they expected to work from home post-pandemic, but few said they would work remotely full time. There’s a “sweet spot” of one or two days per week of telecommuting, Watts said.
Campany said the commission had discussed a single weekly meeting in the office to draw people together.
“They like the flexibility, but they want to see each other,” he said.
As a regional planner, he’s concerned about the future of local businesses, particularly ones that thrived on foot traffic from office workers. So far, evenings, weekends and holidays in Brattleboro have been “normal,” but they “need to get people back to offices downtown,” he said.
“We’re going to have to stumble through this a bit,” he said.
