This is the first large-scale survey of office workers following one month of the UK's nationwide lockdown to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. The research, published by Atlas Cloud, looks into the working habits of more than 3,000 office workers during the coronavirus pandemic, discovering where they’re working from, how well employers have equipped them and why some companies are still office-based.

If you’re short on time, here’s a quick overview of the significant findings of the research:

• The first large-scale survey of British working habits since the coronavirus lockdown began finds four in five office workers (79%) now based at home believe the lockdown has proven they can work effectively from home.

• However, more than half of homeworkers (57%) believe their company should be doing more to help them work productively from home.

• A quarter of workers are using a personal laptop (25%) for homeworking and more than half of those are storing work files on their personal devices, raising concerns about the security of business information.

• British businesses are now facing a trilemma of homeworking problems including a global shortage of laptops, poor home broadband connection and cyber security.

• The living room is the most common place for people to work from home, followed by the study/home office, bedroom, dining room and kitchen.

Legal Services

• Three quarters (77%) of workers in the legal profession believe the lockdown has proven they can work effectively from home.

• Prior to the Coronavirus lockdown only two fifths (41%) of legal workers said they had the ability to work from home when they want – about a fifth lower than workers in the financial services, government and manufacturing sectors where between 63% and 58% of workers could work from home.

• More than half of legal workers (56%) believe their company should be doing more to help them work productively from home.

• Less than half (44%) of legal workers said their employer has helped them to make adequate provisions to work from home long-term.

• While more than a fifth (20%) of legal workers said they need their company to act urgently to enable them to work productively from home during the lockdown.

• And more than a third (36%) of workers said they need their company to invest in longer-term solutions.

• More than four fifths of legal staff are working on a laptop or desktop supplied by their employer prior to the coronavirus pandemic (83%).

• However, more than a sixth of workers (17%) are now working at home on personal laptops and desktops (17%).

• While a further 10% are working on laptops and desktops bought since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

• Almost a fifth (18%) of legal workers have flagged concerns about their access to computer files while working from home.

• Almost two thirds (63%) of those now working on personal devices are storing business information on them, potentially opening legal firms up to security breaches of information held on poorly protected personal devices.

According to Pete Watson, Atlas Cloud CEO, "Atlas Cloud has been at the forefront of cloud technology for over 10 years, enabling law firms to work effectively from anywhere, on any device. Our various research shows that not only is offering remote working essential to attracting and retaining the best legal talent, but it also has a positive impact on productivity, with fee earners committing more billable hours to their firm as a result of commute time savings."The survey offers an in-depth look at the issue of home working in Britain. We encourage you to click on the graphic below to see the full survey.

COVID-19 Survey: How is Lockdown Britain Coping with Home Working? Graphic courtesy of author.

About Atlas CloudAtlas Cloud is a specialist IT service provider that uses the best of Microsoft 365 and Azure to enable secure work from any location. Operating nationally from their Newcastle headquarters, they offer consultancy through to fully-managed services – and anything in between.