Home Working In Scotland During And After The Pandemic Prevalence Experiences And Preferences

Abstract

The COVID-19 Pandemic caused a change in the working patterns experienced by many Scottish people. This rapid report describes the change to home working induced by the pandemic and the restrictions it imposed. It reports the preferred working patterns reported by our sample of older people living in Scotland and describes which factors influences those preferences. The sample of older people (aged <50) was drawn from two Scottish longitudinal studies - Healthy Ageing in Scotland (HAGIS) and Generation Scotland. A predefined panel of Scottish respondents (aged <50) was additionally invited to participate. Data were collected between October 2021 – January 2022 using electronic and postal self-complete interviews and telephone-assisted personal interviews (TAPI). From a target sample of 15,674 older people, 3373 (41% men, 59% women) participants completed the survey. 40% of workers in our sample increased the hours spent working from home. A majority of our working respondents (>85%) report that their preferred working arrangements would continue to involve spending at least some of their working hours working from home. As well as the reduced infection risk, workers particularly like working from home because it avoids having to commute and it gives control over their own work schedule. Nearly half of workers surveyed identified loneliness as something they disliked about working from home. About 80% of our sample expected that after the pandemic they would spend just as many hours working (paid or voluntary) as they had prior to the pandemic. Of those who foresaw a change in their activity, about 75% expected to reduce their hours worked.