A large number of small and medium-sized businesses around the world are forced to rethink plans to return employees to the office due to the ongoing threat of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new study.
The JumpCloud report showed that many small and midsize businesses are still continuing to adjust their job models as the threat of a pandemic remains, especially with the rapidly spreading Delta variant.
The report found that 70% of SMBs will offer an indefinite work from home option to appear to employees who are still hesitant to go to the office.
Flexible working
Overall, more than half (52.8%) of respondents said they are now rethinking their plans to return to the office, with an additional 15.9% saying that they have already delayed their “office work” date.
Of those who have delayed a return to the office, 30% of respondents have done so until September; 16.3% until October; 18.8% until November or later; and 35% are yet to put a firm date on going back.
JumpCloud’s report, which surveyed more than 500 IT professionals across the UK and the US, found significant regional variations in the strictness of vaccine mandates.
It found that small and medium-sized businesses in the southern US (including Texas, Florida, and Georgia) are least likely to have a vaccination mandate, with only 56.1% of companies taking steps to enforce a vaccination mandate for employees, compared to 82% in Northeast states (including New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts).
In the UK, 72.8% of companies in Greater London said they were taking steps to make vaccination compulsory, while in the rest of the UK only 44.9%.
“SMBs constantly continue to show great resourcefulness, flexibility and initiative in responding to the pandemic and the Delta variant,” said Rajat Bhargava, CEO of JumpCloud.
“As SMBs grapple with how and where employees will work, we are rapidly expanding the capabilities provided through the JumpCloud platform with new security such as our recently announced one-touch push multi-factor authentication, which makes it easier and cheaper. for small IT teams to adopt advanced security policies ”.
