In a recent article Gartner presented several questions business leaders should chew on as the COVID-19 vaccines goes into distribution. One of the questions drives at what impact will the vaccine have on a return to the workplace. As the vaccine rolls out over the next several months the decision to return to the workplace as it was pre-pandemic is not just a matter of workplace safety any longer.The evaluation of employee productivity during the pandemic will also be taken into consideration.Gartner Poll Pie Chart

According to a recent Gartner poll, most employees have been just as productive or even more productive working remotely. In another survey of 1,200 CIOs conducted by U.S. based Enterprise Technology Research (ETR), 48.6% reported productivity had improved since remote work started. Through the successful expansion and adoption of cloud technologies, the distributed/hybrid workforce models are now an integral part of the organizational structure. As a result, businesses are reducing their physical footprint and shifting recruitment efforts by sourcing talent from a wider regional swath with the expectation that a large portion of the workforce will remain operating remotely. In the same ETR survey of IT decision makers, the data suggests that permanent work from home will double in 2021 as productivity has increased during the pandemic. To be more precise, permanent remote work is expected to double to 34.4% in 2021 compared to the pre-pandemic level of 16.4%. The measure for productivity during the pandemic indicates that remote work has worked out well and is here to stay.