Remote workers may be happy about work-life balance but they are certainly insecure about their jobs. According to ADP Research Institute’s ‘People at Work 2024: A Global Workforce View’—which surveyed 34,612 workers in 18 countries around the world—remote workers are 1.3 times more likely to feel insecure about their job than hybrid or on-site workers. Clearly, staying physically away from their offices is making remote workers a tad uncomfortable. Amongst the respondents of the survey, 9,567 workers were from the Asia Pacific—Australia, China, India, Japan and Singapore.
However, this feeling of insecurity had lessened last year, compared to the year before. Job insecurity affected far fewer remote workers in 2023 than it did in 2022. Does that mean hybrid workers and those working full time from office do not feel insecure about their jobs anymore? Of course, they do, but their numbers were fewer, and the change in feelings of insecurity was smaller too.
Hybrid workers—with many having to work on site for some time every week—feel pressurised to increase their physical presence in the office, what with employers increasingly becoming determined to see their employees back in office
More vulnerable are the remote workers who are parents to small babies or young children. They feel less secure in their jobs than those with no children or big children. However, employers are more likely to be understanding and grant remote-working parents of small children more flexibility. More than half of working parents with infants at home (51 per cent) admit that their employer has become more flexible about work location, compared to 18 per cent of parents with adult children and 36 per cent employees without any children.
When it comes to work hours, about 44 per cent of workers with infants say their employer is more flexible. On the other hand, only 18 per cent of parents with adult children and 33 per cent of those without children report flexibility on the part of their employers.
Despite companies worldwide pushing their workforces to return to office, a surprising 37 per cent of workers say their employer has become more flexible about remote work in the past year. Only seven per cent feel their employers have become less flexible. More than half of the respondents of the survey said their employer’s policies on work location haven’t changed nor has there been any change in terms of the flexibility around working hours
In fact, survey participants in the Asia Pacific region are most likely to admit their employer has become more flexible. In Europe, most respondents say their employer has been constant in terms of flexibility.
