Danish IT pros want to work from home at least once a week

Let’s face it, being home is nicer than being at the office. It’s comfortable, quiet and you can wear your pyjamas if you want to. You have your own fridge, your own furniture, your own bed — even your own bathroom! The idea of working from home is appealing to most people. If you’re an employer who wants to offer flex hours or otherwise give employees some level of flexibility, allowing them to work from home seems like the natural solution; the pandemic has certainly shifted views in that regard.

What does it do for your employees?
A work from home (WFH) workplace can give employees greater freedom and flexibility in relation to their work tasks. Job satisfaction and motivation increases when you gain more independence. But at the same time, difficulties arise that need to be avoided, especially if WFH is not something you have chosen voluntarily – such as during the pandemic. WFH was for many of us, to begin with, not a choice we made but a simple necessity that no one had anticipated would still be relevant more than a year later.

A WFH opportunity is more important than ever
A recent report in collaboration between Computerworld IT Job Bank and Computerworld uncovers interesting angles on WFH and concludes, that the pandemic has accelerated the development of the way we work today – and that WFH has come to stay. Therefore, the opportunity for WFH also becomes a crucial parameter if you want to attract, recruit, develop and retain IT professionals in the future. However, this does not mean that you must switch out attending at physical offices with a home workplace. In fact, 89% of Danish IT professionals want to work from home at least once a week. So, there are still 11% who do not want to work from home. The rhetoric’s around WFH has predominantly been positive and aimed at the beneficial effects it has. But this kind of working is not for all.

Is WFH good for your business?
One of the big issues, both for employers and employees, has of course been, whether the conditions for working efficiently and productively have improved with the prevalence of WFH. 56% of the IT professionals surveyed, in the previously mentioned report, agree with the statement that they are more productive at home than in the office. At the same time, 78% of the respondents assess that they are more undisturbed. Both can be related to the fact that the IT professionals are not in physical proximity of their manager and colleagues, which perhaps could be why the disturbances are less evident. At home, you can turn the phone on silent; at the office, a colleague stepping into your office, has already disturbed, as the person enters. With disturbances eliminated, there is time for the necessary contemplation and concentration that makes us comes through the pile of work tasks and work more goal oriented.

Historically, we have seen an increased amount of work-related pressure on IT professionals because IT projects throughout the last couple of years have been prioritised in companies, that at the same time have had difficulties attracting and recruiting IT workforce. Nevertheless, 49% of the IT professionals surveyed believe that work-related pressure remains unchanged when working from home. At the same time, 39% of the respondent’s experience that they work more hours per week. So, there is still a high work-related pressure, and almost 2 out of 5 experiences working more. Unchanged, high work-related pressure can mean that greater demands are presented to the IT professionals who are expected to deliver more in the same number of hours when they work from home.

Read the full report here.
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