The antivirus giant took the lead in switching to home office in March, and now they are planning to offer this arrangement permanently for those employees who are interested. Photo credit: Freepik / For illustrative purposes.
Czech Rep., Sep 22 (BD) – Rates of employees working from home have risen sharply due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the Czech Republic, about 35% of the workforce worked from home in the early months of the pandemic according to a report from Sazka company’s Instant Research published in March. After the first wave, most companies returned at least some of their workers to the office. But some employees are now considering working from home permanently.
A survey conducted by Jonathan Appleton, Managing Director of ABSL, a tech and business organisation, found that about 50% of responding companies allowed their staff to return to the office in the summer months, but only very few did. The year has seen many tech companies recording high profits, and workers maintaining or even increasing in productivity while working from home.
“People work well from home, they don’t have to waste time commuting, they work at a time that suits them best and they have maximum support from employers,” said Appleton, according to Expats.cz.
The Prague-based antivirus giant, Avast, has declared their intention to allow some of their employees to work from home permanently. In June, some staff returned to their offices in Prague, Brno and Slovakia, but have switched back to home office since August. An internal survey conducted at the company revealed that about 40% of the staff would prefer to work from home permanently. Pavel Baudiš, Avast co-founder, thinks that the number may reduce after the coronavirus pandemic.
“A lot of people have shown interest in working from home permanently,” said Baudiš in an interview with Seznam Zprávy. The company is also setting up organisational plans to support their employees in making the shift to permanent home office. They have also allowed their employees to take their office furniture home.
