Canadians and Brits spend the most time working from home, even though Americans want to most, survey shows
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- A German think tank surveyed over 42,000 full-time employees in 34 countries.
- It found that Canadians and Brits spend the most time working from home.
- US workers are in third place, despite both staff and employers wanting to spend the most time.
Canadians and Brits spend the most time working from home, according to a study from the IFO Center for Macroeconomics and Surveys.
In April and May, the German think tank surveyed more than 42,400 full-time employees in 34 countries.
It found Americans were in third place for the number of days spent working from home, at an average of 1.4 per week.
That's only narrowly behind the UK's 1.5, and Canada, whose workers spend an average of 1.7 days working from home each week.
"What we're seeing is that employees really value the option to work from home," said Mathias Dolls, deputy director of the IFO Center. "However, there's a gap between the number of days that employees would like to work from home and the number that their employers are planning for them."
Despite actually working from home the third-most, American workers want to spend the most time doing so — at an average of 2.6 days a week.
Plus, US employers plan an average of 1.9 days a week, which is narrowly more than employers in the UK and Canada.
Nonetheless, as Dolls points out, employers don't quite want to give their staff as much time working from home as they would like.
But even then, most people work from home even less than the employers plan.
Globally, workers spend an average of 0.9 days working from home, despite employers planning for 1.1 days, and staff wanting two days.
South Koreans are the least likely to work from home, according to the survey's average of 0.4 days per week.
The IFO Center's survey follows a report from McKinsey earlier this month, which surveyed 13,000 office workers across six countries about hybrid work.
The management-consulting firm found that higher-earning employees were most likely to push for WFH.