If you have been working remotely since the pandemic began, what kind of work style would you prefer after (if) the pandemic has been eliminated?

Faced, without the restrictions of a pandemic, around thirty percent of the eligible workforce opted for a flexible patterned scheduled home working environment.

This pandemic has put paid to that.

Face to face isolation from colleagues, the chit-chat, gossip, the work space banter, all taken for granted, has brought added and essential mental health issues for HR.

95% of the staff want to return to a office environment.

I don't blame them I frankly have had enough too.

100% remote is the nicest from the worker's perspective. Make your own hours, work in your underwear if you like. But some degree of personal physical contact is needed to maintain trust, even among your co-workers. And as for working Sales, you can do everything remote in terms of maintaining current accounts, but you're not going to be securing any new accounts from people you never met, online. On the monitor you just look like another youtube goofball.

I can't get my office staff to do remote. They insist on being in the office. My floor staff doing the tooling and die work think they are nuts. Who wouldn't want to be home and get paid for it?

For the past couple of weeks I've been working from the office, other three days working from home. I have caring responsibilities so couldn't go back into the office 5 days a week even if I wanted to.

I've been working remotely for years before 2020, and as a long time remote worker I can say that the remote work panorama has paradoxically gotten way worse this last year.

Until last year one of the big points of remote work was "work from anywhere", but there are now a lot of companies that claim to work "remote", but many of them have plans to stop remote work at some point in the future, or just plain do not understand the logistics of going full remote, and ask their workers to be based on some specific city.

Also, there are a lot of people who have not properly prepared for remote work. In my experience, I've been in places that have a hybrid culture, with remote work and also office work depending on people's working style, but now that everyone has been pushed to remote work, I've seen an increase in useless meetings, and a lot of distractions during them.

This year has been the first time I've seen people with their kids in the background, dogs barking, loud televisions and other things during a meeting, and it is always from people who originally weren't working remote.

Me, in order to start working remotely, I actually had to prepare a whole studio so that I can work without distractions, but a lot of people who weren't planning or just do not care have now been forced to work remotely.

If anything, this year has made me hate more remote work, and I really wish people who are not able or do not care about taking the minimum requirements for proper remote work to just go back to the office.

I teach at a university and zoom is terrible for managing classes [snip]

Well, perhaps time to take the opportunity to adapt.

Online teaching in some form is the future of education. I actually couldn't be happier using zoom. No issues at all, and the students all enjoy it too.

It's called adapting and taking the time to develop yourself to deal with the situation at hand.

I've been self-employed and working from home for many years now but one of the first things we did once we were sure this was sustainable was quit Kanto and move to a small town in the country. Our cost of living is way lower and quality of life is better. We also decided to have a third child, which definitely would not have been possible while I was doing the salaryman thing in the city.

I think if people felt confident that they could work remotely and relocate without losing their job, it would benefit the country enormously in terms of regional revitalization and higher birth rates.

I'd prefer to work remotely but my boss has decided the best way to motivate us is to get us commuting on packed trains twice a day and sitting in an unventilated room full of chin-diapered oyajis snorting their sinuses every 90 seconds.

The results of his master plan can be seen in the figures....way, way, way, way down.

I'd prefer not to go back and work remotely full-time 

If I could have done that, I would have bought a house in Iga Mie

Sorry, but with the train companies cutting hours so that you are FORCED to endure packed trains despite the virus, and the government shouganaiing it, I'd rather not have to commute at all. I mean, I don't have to anyway, except a bit on foot or by bike, but I'd rather not have others suffer through it all the same.

Born, “work is the curse of the drinking classes!”

I just want to be Jobless but paid by the government on one of those universal income things everyone talks of, ......you know a hand out, .........a benefit, .........no work.... just free govt money living carefree, life of leisure, working is over rated and so time consuming,.

they don't like their colleagues or their company. A long commute would not be a reasonable excuse to never go to the office. But perhaps they are in the wrong job.

That can be all of that. Coworkers from hell that don't even talk to you directly when in the office (they mail their rants, so no need to meet them ), commute is like 2 daily Paris-Dakar style races and the boring job... but regular income and paid holidays were not part of the package in times I had pleasant jobs. What bothers me with Covid is being "locked" at home for 'holidays' and daily after work time off and "remote social life". That's friends and relatives I'd like to go meet. I have virtual meeting with my kid nephews tomorrow... and that sucks to not be allowed to go to their place.

I would love to be able to work 100% remotely just so I could buy a big house in the country and raise my kids there surrounded by trees and nature.

As it is my job requires me to be physically present in the heart of a big ugly concrete jungle, which means my kids are being raised in the suburbs of said big ugly concrete jungle. I can’t complain since there are a lot of amenities around and its nice to have a job, but it definitely isn’t the lifestyle I dream of!

Going to and from work takes alot of your time and energy/ =Much easier and faster to do that work from home if possible.

With less people going to work the commutes are easier though. = Both parties win from this.

I would rather be working at home 100% and probably appear at the office a couple of times a month. I've saved A LOT of time, money and energy by not commuting, ironing out and washing my office clothes, and attending those mandatory nomikai since we were put on a work from home set up, and have diverted those resources into improving my home instead. I really wouldn't mind visiting the office from time to time though. If I wanted to chat with my coworkers, I'd just hit them up on social media or if wanted to rejoin human society, I could step out of my apartment for a bit. Me being at home is one less commuter clogging up public transport and one less person driving up a company's utility bill, imagine if thousands more were working at home.

Thankfully we had no need to work so the question is out on a limb. Did not vote.

I voted once or twice a week because I like chatting with my co-workers and having lunch with them. I can only deduce from the number of people who said they would prefer never to go back to their offices that they don't like their colleagues or their company. A long commute would not be a reasonable excuse to never go to the office. But perhaps they are in the wrong job.

Once or twice a week, perhaps. I think my wife works like me out of her hair a bit more.

If you don't have to go back to your office at all, you can live anywhere you want. Imagine sipping a drink on a beautiful tropical beach south of Okinawa or living at a ski resort in the Japan Alps or Hokkaido.

Voted a few times a week. I travelled around Japan quite a bit for work before Covid. I miss that.

Going to the office...not so much, although I miss taking a walk to Maruzen in Marunouchi or browsing in Akihabara or Ameyoko after work. There is a nice casual Chinese restaurant near my office I used to drop in to eat and practice my crap Chinese with the owner. He told me business was poor the last time I saw him. Hope he’s still got his head above water.

Like the remote work to 100% continue. Would prefer fewer hours as well

A few times a month would be nice and sufficient. Because the saying clearly says, ‘if the cat’s away the mice...’ (no, not will play) finally can work undisturbed. lol