With the pandemic still raging in large parts of the world, most procurement professionals continue to work from home. The recent survey by Beroe disclosed that many of them prefer the remote work model. At the same time, a collective section of the respondents like a hybrid model wherein they spend a day or two at the workplace with colleagues and the remaining days of the week working remotely.
“The objective of this survey was two-fold. One, we wanted to find out whether procurement professionals are willing to go back to the office or not. And second, can procurement operations be permanently managed out of employee homes,” said Sakthi Prasad, Head of Content at Beroe. “The responses were interesting, underlining how a lot of people have gotten used to the work-from-home model and how the hybrid workplace could be the future in the procurement community.”
Read More: Setting Records, Walmart Continues Moving Toward Becoming a Totally Renewable Business
Owing to the accelerating vaccination rate, the U.S. and large parts of Europe are gearing up to fully open their economies, including travel. Companies are opening, and employees are getting back to their offices. In that, will procurement professionals go back to the office if called for? What’s their sentiment regarding remote working and resuming their “regular” work-life? Beroe set out to find out the answers.
Beroe, one of the leading names in procurement intelligence and supplier compliance, posed its questions to users of Beroe LiVE, a large community of thousands of decision-makers in procurement. Sourcing and supply chain professionals from over 580 companies worldwide participated in the survey.
61.4 percent of respondents said they are working from home full-time, while 23.1 percent said they visit the office once in a while. 15.5 percent have returned to the office full-time. Answering if they are looking forward to returning to the workplace, 31.7 percent agreed and strongly agreed to this; 37.2 percent don’t want to visit the office. The remaining were neutral.
Read More: Storytelling Network Shopflix Officially Launches, Bringing To Life The Stories Of Founders, Brands…
The survey by Beroe reveals 56.3 percent of procurement professionals want to continue working from home permanently. 15.9 percent are neutral, and 27.7 percent don’t want to continue with the remote working model. At large, many respondents said they want to visit the office occasionally – once or twice a week – which highlights the appeal of the hybrid workplace model. Interestingly, in comparison, more women don’t want to go back to the office.
The survey points out that 64.5 percent of procurement professionals believe that procurement operations can be managed permanently from employee homes. 11 percent of respondents were neutral. 24.6 percent disagree or strongly disagree with this, believing one needs to be at the office to manage procurement operations.
“A lot of women in our survey are more drawn towards working from home when compared to men. One of the reasons is that many of the respondents are nervous about returning to the office due to COVID-19. More than 8 percent of them are nervous even when they are vaccinated,” said Anand Narayanan, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Human Resource Officer at Beroe. “The survey is a clear indication that procurement operations are indeed possible to take care of remotely. Procurement professionals don’t want to return to the office after working from home for more than a year. And those who are looking to return, many of them would rather prefer a hybrid workplace model.”
