Year's end means key COVID-19 relief measures expiring

Back in March, when a rapidly proliferating pandemic forced workers across the country out of their offices and into their homes, most thought the arrangement would be short-lived—a few weeks, maybe a month or so. As the year winds down, with many people still working from home—and coping with the kind of isolation they never expected—various surveys have shown that most workers miss the office. They may like the flexibility of working from home and hope to continue the arrangement in a limited way postpandemic, but they want the kind of interaction with colleagues they get in the office. This many months into the pandemic, workers are seeing that the isolation of working alone in their homes is taking a toll.

Distilling the dilemma

A survey released at the end of September from Boomi, a Dell Technologies business and provider of a cloud-based integration platform as a service, found that 58% of employees felt more isolated and disconnected from their work and their teams because they were working from home. The survey also found that 49% of workers wanted to see their employers improve remote collaboration tools and systems.

As a way of dealing with the challenges of isolation, the survey found that 41% of workers were increasing how often they use technology, and 38% reported adding new apps or technology processes to help them get their work done.