How Many NY Employees Have Never Met Their Co-Workers After COVID?
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a number of changes in our lives, and one prominent area where these changes still exist, is the workplace.
COVID-19 numbers are on the decline, but employees in New York are still working from home. Crowded meeting rooms have been replaced with online video calls, and your office is still your office, but now, your office is in your home.
Some New Yorkers have returned to their offices (or studios) in recent months, but a large percentage still work completely from home. Because of this, people who work together every single day, may have never actually been in the same room as one another.
New York Employees Admit to Never Meeting Co-Workers In-Person
Green Building Elements, a self-described news and information hub, surveyed 4,121 work-from-home employees across the country on their current work situation. As part of the survey, they asked if employees in every state had ever met their co-workers in-person, or if their workplace relationships took place solely online.
In a stunning commentary on the state of our society, the survey said that 57% of work-from-home employees had never met any of their co-workers in-person.
Being an employee in 2022 is completely different than it was on this same day in 2019. The pandemic caused employers to create infrastructure for employees to complete their jobs without needing to interact with anyone not in their family unit. Even though the pandemic has calmed down in recent months, the infrastructure still exists, and keeping employees in remote settings often saves businesses money.
With budgets still bouncing back from pandemic-related recessions, saving every extra dollar has become critical for businesses across the country.
New York's Statistics Compared to Other Neighboring States
The survey data also showed that states neighboring New York have had very similar circumstances in their respective workplaces:
- Massachusetts: 65%
- Connecticut: 56%
- Vermont: 55%
- New Hampshire: 60%
- Pennsylvania: 79% (wow!)
- New Jersey: 63%
Green Building Elements shared a few more interesting nuggets of information about the lives of those who work from home. An estimated 58% of employees said that their relationships with co-workers have improved while working from home. What's more, 66% of surveyed employees said that they are more likely to stay in-touch with co-workers outside of work hours because of the work-from-home circumstances, largely due to not having the time to socialize that office life often provides.
Mode of communication in work-from-home companies breaks down like this: the majority (41%) use Zoom, while 35% use Teams, 10% use Slack, 8% use WhatsApp and 6% use Skype.