News item | 27-06-2022 | 07:00
One in three employees continues to work from home for at least half of the time, even now that the advice to work from home has long since expired. Good news: organizations are very positive about hybrid working. This is apparent from a major employer survey conducted by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (IenW). The research was published today.
More than two in three organizations have a home working arrangement. Many organizations have therefore improved the facilities and arrangements with regard to hybrid working in the past year. This applies, for example, to the options for online meetings and the ICT and occupational health and safety facilities in one’s own workrooms at home. The homework allowance is also more often offered by organizations (from 38% in 2020 to 60% in 2021). This means that almost all companies that have a work-from-home scheme (68%) also offer compensation for this (60%).
Minister Harbers: “Fortunately, we can meet more often and more easily in real life. At the same time, no one likes to be stuck in traffic. By working partly in the office and partly at home, we can reduce the peak load. The incentive from employers to travel less or differently helps to reduce the amount of traffic jams.”
State Secretary Heijnen agrees. “Stimulating more sustainable alternatives to commuting helps to improve our air quality. Cycling, electric cars or flexible working are all options for reducing emissions and working together to create cleaner air.”
The aim of the employer survey is to gain insight into the measures and actions that employers are taking to promote sustainable travel behavior among employees. Sustainable travel behavior can be broken down into three categories: less travel, such as with work-from-home arrangements, travel differently and travel cleaner.
Travel differently
Employers actively motivate their employees to choose a more sustainable alternative to the car, such as the bicycle. A purchase allowance for employees is now more often available for a bicycle or e-bike. In 2021 it was available at 48 percent of organizations, now at 56 percent. Reimbursement gives more people the opportunity to purchase a good bicycle and use it to cycle to work. In addition, fewer organizations have lease cars and/or their own fleet available for business mobility in order to further reduce car use at a short distance.
Cleaner travel
More employers are opting to switch to cleaner means of transport such as electric cars. Four in ten organizations will have significantly increased the share of electric cars in 2021 (39%). This is a strong increase compared to a year earlier, when the share of electric cars was greatly expanded at 24 percent of the organizations.
Expectations
Four in ten employers expect to start working on sustainable travel (further) in the coming year. In the survey they indicate that they are (more) engaged in encouraging different travelling, encouraging less travel and/or encouraging cleaner travel.