COVID-19:
The social impact of Working From Home
Calculate the social, environmental and health impact of your business working from home.
This is just one example of the capability that already exists within Impact – powerful calculations driven by minimal input data, resulting in impactful insights and reports. Learn More.
Impact is a cloud based platform used by organisations to understand, maximise and evidence their social and environmental impact activity in real-time.
We help social and sustainability reporting professionals capture, quantify and visualise their organisations efforts, saving them time, helping them look good and cut reporting busywork.
Guidance notes for employers
We encourage employers to be great, proactive listeners during this time; understand what your colleagues are going through at the moment, and their diversity of experiences. Respond to their needs, and make adjustments where possible.
Encourage video conferencing where possible, and acknowledge the need for non-work human contact. Even if the bottom line is your number one priority, staff should be seen as your number one commodity - and without a happy and healthy workforce, your profits will suffer.
The most successful and sustainable companies - and those with the highest staff retention rates - are those who listen to and value their employees, and fully understand the impact of their policies on the lives of their colleagues.
Guidance notes for CSR/Sustainability Managers
As working from home practices are becoming more prevalent, the practices of employers are adjusting to meet the demands and workstyles of their employees. This means a growing body of research into the effects and impacts of working from home.
However, it was noticeable in our own, secondary research here, that there is a lack of valid research into the impact of working from home on certain crucial aspects of workers' lives, especially during enforced, full isolation such as during the present COVID-19 lockdown.
It is likely that many workers will experience negative impacts associated with isolation: loneliness, depression, anxiety, boredom, and so on.
Whilst the above calculations reference a study that shows additional exercise as a result of working from home, the actual figure - particularly during a formal country-wide lockdown - is likely to be different.
Data Sources.
Values have been calculated for the ‘average UK worker’, and assumes: 5-day working weeks and 225 working days per year. Data pertaining to commuter times, mode of transport, CO2 emissions of transport, spend on commutes, and rate of COVID-19 proliferation are based on the following sources: