Has Covid Killed Off Workers’ Ambitions?

New research by Aviva has revealed that nearly 50% of staff are less interested in their careers since the Covid pandemic.

The study found that 47% of employees described themselves as having become less career-oriented, with around two in five adding that they were becoming unable to switch off from their jobs.

The insurer said that one result of the working from home culture, prompted by pandemic restrictions, is that there was now an expectation that workers would be ‘ever-present and always on’ with 40% of people now saying that they fear work-prompted burnout.

Around half of the survey respondents said that the boundaries between their home and working lives had become increasingly blurred, with the negative impacts of this change affecting women disproportionately: 46% of women said that they were concerned with burning out, compared to 35% of male respondents.

Furthermore, 24% of women said that they had experienced a downgrade to their work-life balance as a direct result of pandemic home working restrictions, compared to 16% of men.

Aviva’s well-being lead, Debbie Bullock, spoke to the Today Programme on the BBC to explain that the lockdown had forced people to reassess how and where work fitted into their lives. She said that the digital age had also made it increasingly difficult for many people to switch off and distance themselves from their jobs, adding that although the pandemic had been a shared experience, the impacts of it had been fragmented and had fallen disproportionately harder on women.

She called on businesses to be aware of the issues and to react to the challenges that workers were facing by stepping up to help and assist wherever necessary. She added that those businesses that didn’t support wellness initiatives would need to prepare themselves for rising sick leave rates.

The study spanned over 2,000 workers at bigger companies. Only 14% said that they were in favour of returning to full-jobs n the office, and 15% said that they would prefer to work from home full time. Men overall were keener to return to the office, whereas women tended to favour working from home.

Aviva suggested that employers would need to look carefully at how they brought their staff back to the office to avoid deepening the existing gender gap of experiences.

It warned that women were being put under extra strain, as they tended to combine work with primary care roles for family members.

Ms Bullock added that the transition towards heavily digitised and flexible working models had been accelerated by the Covid pandemic but said that employers should show caution – ensuring that their offices remained a welcome place for collaboration, mentoring and team socialising – in order to build strong, productive working relationships.

Only last month the global dating app Bumble closed its offices for a full week in a bid to tackle workplace stress. Instead of working, its worldwide team of 700 were told to take time off, switch off and to take time to focus on themselves.