Survey Shows More Than Three-Quarters Of Workers Will Return To The Office In January
More than three-quarters of office workers surveyed by Workhuman say their companies are going to proceed with return-to-office plans at the beginning of 2022. Moreover, many of the workers say they are happy about it.
Altogether, 77.2% of the respondents said their company is planning a return in January, while only about 3% said their company isn't. About 10% said their work isn't on-site in any case.
Some 38.6% characterized their feelings about a potential return as excited, while nearly 17.6% said they were happy. At the other end of the spectrum, just over 14% said they were anxious, and smaller numbers claimed they are fearful or stressed.
A bit more than 40% of the respondents said they would be in the office five days a week, while nearly 27% said four days and over 22% said three days. A combined total of less than 10% said they would be in the office either two days or one day a week.
The survey was taken on behalf of Forbes magazine the week of Dec. 6, querying 1,000 full-time U.S. office workers. Of those, 83% said they had visited the office at least once during the previous month.
The survey found that companies are proceeding with their plans despite recent news about the omicron variant, which has caused some high-profile corporations to delay return-to-office plans once again, similar to what happened in the summer with the delta variant.
Not long after the omicron variant hit, Google and Uber announced separately that they were postponing their return-to-office plans to an unspecified date in 2022. Previously, they had said Jan. 10 was the return date. Ford Motor Co. also pushed its return from January to March.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and ride-sharing company Lyft both said on Tuesday that they will allow workers to delay their return when their offices fully reopen early in 2022.
Target CEO Brian Cornell recently told the Associated Press that the retail giant isn't going to put dates on a calendar for a mandated return to its Minneapolis headquarters.
