The initiative is intended to help employees recharge and achieve a healthy work-life balance.Continue reading
Following the outbreak of the pandemic, more and more workplaces in Europe and Hungary mandated that employees work from home, especially in the case of office jobs where daily tasks can be done remotely. In a recent publication, the Oeconomus Economic Research Foundation compared EU and Hungarian data.
In order to build an efficient workplace community and to improve controllability, there is an increasing demand from employers for employees to return to the office, sometimes in “hybrid” form. Work efficiency has also been raised as an issue among employers, but is a matter of debate even among experts. In addition, the prevention of mental health problems (e.g. loneliness, depression, anxiety) may also be an issue when workers are recalled from home to the office.
As Eurostat data shows, in 2022, 22.5% of employed persons aged 15-64 years worked from home occasionally (12.4%) or with some regularity (10.1%) on average in the European Union. In 2013, only 11.9% of those employed worked from home, with the big boom coming during the COVID-19 pandemic, when several workplaces ordered workers to work from home (mainly office jobs) as a precautionary measure.
In 2020, the share of people working from home jumped to over 20%, and in 2021, almost a quarter of the employed worked in this way (24%).
There are two opposing trends in the world regarding working from home. On the one hand, more and more employers are gradually inviting their employees back to the office. This is shown by the fact that the proportion of people working from home in the EU fell from 24% in 2021 to 22.5% in 2022. On the other hand, some companies are moving from “work from home” to “work from anywhere.”
The “home office” option may even become more important in motivating employees as younger generations gradually enter the labor market. For members of Generation Z (those born between 1995 and 2009), also known as “digital natives” (smart electronic devices are already part of the childhood of many of them), the possibility of working from home and the technical implementation of this is essential, as they value the freedom of working hours and freedom to work. Compared with previous generations, this generation is more interested in the possibility of working from home and in more flexible working conditions, the publication points out.
In Hungary, too, the pandemic has brought a greater increase in working from home:
while 4.6% of the employed worked from home (occasionally or regularly) in 2019, this proportion rose to 11% in 2020 and 13.3% in 2021.
In 2022, however, the share of people working from home fell to 10.6%, meaning that more and more workers were called back to the office in Hungary as the pandemic gradually subsided. Men and women worked from home in almost equal proportions in Hungary in 2022 (men: 10.3%, women: 10.8%).
Within the European Union, the Netherlands has the highest share of employees working from home (53% in 2022), followed by Sweden (44.8%), and Finland (40.1%). The lowest rates of home working in the EU are found in Greece (9.9%), Bulgaria (4.5%), and Romania (4.3%) (2022 data).
In terms of the prevalence of working from home, it can therefore be seen that it is more common in the Western member states, while it is less common in member states located in the East.
In Hungary, 10.6% of those employed worked from home in 2022, according to Eurostat (2024), a relatively low figure in the EU ranking, although double the figure of Romania or Bulgaria.
The author of the Oeconomus publication points out that it is interesting to see within the EU how the development of a given Member State is related to the number of those employed working from home also in the given economy. A more developed Member State, i.e. one with a higher GDP per capita, is more likely to have a higher share of people working at home. A less developed Member State with a lower GDP per capita is less likely to have a higher share of employees working from home.
Via Oeconomus, Featured image: Pixabay