Against a backdrop of fears over a new UK lockdown, the Office for National Statistics revealed that 62% of working adults had commuted to work last week. The proportion working from home remained at 20% for the second consecutive week.
This was the first time that the proportion of working adults travelling to work had risen above 60% since the weekly survey began in early April.
Although the proportion of people travelling to work had increased, 10% of the workforce remained on furlough leave.
The commuter data included people who may be travelling to work exclusively, or who are doing a mixture of commuting and working from home.
Road traffic, a rough indicator of economic activity, was still below February levels but was trending upward the report found.
According to the CIPD survey of 1,000 employers, 37% think staff will regularly avoid the journey into the office following Covid-19 – up from just 18% before the pandemic.
CIPD chief executive Peter Cheese said: “The step-change shift to home working to adapt to lockdowns has taught us all a lot about how we can be flexible in ways of working in the future.
“Employers have learnt that, if supported and managed properly, home working can be as productive and innovative as office working and we can give more opportunity for people to benefit from better work-life balance.”
However, he said it did not suit everyone and that organisations would have to design working arrangements around people’s needs while “also meeting the needs of the business”.
