White-collar workers haven’t seen the inside of their office spaces for some time now, as last spring they “relocated” to telework arrangements en masse worldwide.
And perhaps even more surprising, according to PYMNTS’ latest survey, consumers who have migrated away from their official offices have grown to like it progressively more as time has gone on, and have become less interested in ever getting back to their physical workspaces again. Seventy-nine percent of remote workers say they do not want to return to a physical office, placing it statistically behind seeing friends, traveling internationally and shopping in a grocery store on the list of things they are eager to resume doing.
All told, 39 percent of all consumers have shifted to working from home instead of in an office, and 83 percent of those consumers intend to keep working from home at least somewhat as often as they do now, even after they are given the green light to go back to the office, according to PYMNTS data. And that latest figure is a pick-up from the last one. As of November of last year, 33 percent of employed consumers had shifted, and 76 percent of those planned to keep working from home.
Whether those plans will actually come to fruition remains to be seen, as new data reported by CNN indicates that while the workers may want to stay remote, management has other ideas. Pre-pandemic, about 18 percent of workers were working from home full-time, and per a survey of 1,450 managers by Accenture, they only expect that figure to be at 25 percent post-pandemic. A jump, though not as large as PYMNTS data indicates.
“I expected that number to be higher,” Jimmy Etheredge, Accenture’s CEO of North America, told CNN. He went on to note that the figure may be misleadingly low — and as discussions between employers and employees roll on, a larger number could end up converting to remote work, at least part of the time or on a project-by-project basis.
Given the growing preference for remote working, it seems those further conversations may be necessary. Because, as the data demonstrates, the great worker relocation is much bigger than a simple change in venue — it’s a piece of a larger total digitization that has seen consumer preferences shift widely.
The pandemic has also changed the way consumers eat, triggering a massive increase in the share of ordering via mobile app or aggregator. PYMNTS research shows that 38 percent of all consumers have shifted from dining in restaurants to ordering food on their mobile phones for pick up later on, while 77 percent of consumers who have shifted to using mobile order-ahead apps plan to keep doing so even after the pandemic has subsided.
It’s also changed the way they shop for household essentials — and when they shop for them. No longer tethered to a 9-5 work schedule, 62 percent of consumers who are grocery shopping in stores less often than they did before the pandemic say they do not want to return to physical shopping as much as they did before the pandemic began, for example.
One of the reasons that digital channels have helped consumers clear their schedules is that they can now make purchases anytime — and that flexibility and control is something they want to keep, even when “normal” resumes again.
Ultimately, the pandemic will be temporary. Though an actual date remains unknown, the fact that the end is in the foreseeable future is well-accepted. But when it comes to the changes consumers have made — in how they work, how they shop, how they eat and how they live — the data shows that those may be more permanent.
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