Survey shows 81 percent of Donegal employees believe in remote working

Eighty-one percent of Donegal workers believe that employees should have a right to work from home if the job can be completed remotely, according to a survey.

These are some of the findings of a survey commissioned by employee benefit and pension specialists Lockton Ireland. The survey polled more than 700 workers nationwide and also found big geographical differences around attitudes towards webcams – with people in some counties much more relaxed than others about a request by an employer to turn on a webcam during the working day.

The counties with least opposition were Leitrim and Kilkenny, with more than seven out of 10 of people there saying they would have “no problem” turning on a webcam. Carlow and Donegal were also amongst the most tolerant counties in this regard – with 67 percent of Carlow people and 62 percent of Donegal people happy to turn the device on.

Three in four survey respondents (74 percent) said they would not be comfortable turning on their webcam while working from home if requested by their employer to do so – with almost half saying they would refuse to turn such a device on as they would consider it a ‘huge invasion of privacy’.

The counties with the people most opposed to turning on webcams for work were Cavan, Laois, Louth, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo and Wicklow – with none of the inhabitants here stating they would have “no problem” with a webcam.

All people living in Wicklow believe that employees should have a right to work from home – if the job can be completed remotely, according to this survey. This means Wicklow is the county with the strongest support for the right to work from home, followed by Kildare (90 percent of those polled said people should have an entitlement to work remotely), Donegal (81 percent) and Dublin (78 percent).

Almost four in 10 (39 percent) workers would choose a higher-paid job over a job that allowed them to work from home, while more than one in three (35 percent) would choose a job that allowed them to work from home. Furthermore, remote working is more important to female workers in Ireland than their male counterparts.