Personal and Work-Life Balance survey 2021 – Remote Working

woman working from home

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has published the third and final publication on the results of the Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey which was carried out in Quarter 3, 2021. The detail in this publication is a subset of the broader data collected. The first publication “Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey 2021 – Main Results” was published on 05 April 2022 and the second publication “Personal and Work-life Balance Survey 2021 – Job and Life Satisfaction and Barriers to Work” was published on 19 April 2022. This publication on “Remote Working” covers employees’ availing of remote working, the availability of remote working pre COVID-19 and the factors influencing the availability of remote working.

Some of the key findings are as follows

  • Almost four in ten (39%) employees were remote working at some stage during 2021, while one in twelve (8%) had availed of some form of remote working pre COVID-19
  • Full-time workers in large organisations were most likely to have worked remotely in the 12 months prior to interview – nearly half (49%) of full-time employees working in organisations of 100 people or more had worked remotely at some point during the previous year compared with just over three in ten (31%) full-time workers in organisations of less than 20 people
  • Professionals were most likely to have worked remotely (63%), followed by Managers, directors & senior officials and Associate professional & technical in joint second place (51%) while by comparison, skilled trade workers had the lowest level of uptake of remote working (3%)
  • Pre COVID-19, Information & communication sector workers had availed most of working remotely (30%), compared to employees in the Human health & social work activities (2%)
  • Workers reported high job and life satisfaction levels, with little difference in satisfaction levels based on employee’s working arrangements
  • Workers who were working mostly from home with a mix of office, hub or travel were most satisfied with both their job (92%) and life as a whole (94%)

To view full results see Personal and Work-Life Balance survey 2021 – Remote Working