The impact of Covid-19 on the digital industry
Covid-19 has made a huge impact on the digital industry, and many others worldwide, and even post-pandemic, Covid-19 still plays a part in our working lives.
The Covid concern may be starting to calm down, and lockdowns are a thing of the past, however we wanted to look into the impact of Covid-19, specifically on the digital industry, to see whether there have been any significant changes since 2021. We have collected this data to include in our 2022 Digital Salary Survey report.
Current working situations post-Covid-19
It is clear that the impact of Covid-19 has forced us to work differently. Luckily for digital professionals, due to the online nature of the industry, many were familiar with working from home, remotely or on a hybrid basis already. This meant that the pandemic may have had less of an impact to digital working environments compared to other industries. Let’s take a closer look…
We asked our digital questionnaire respondents to describe their current working situation, to which they shared…
- 42% said that they work fully remotely
- 36% are fully hybrid (1-2 days in the office)
- 15% are working hybrid (1-2 days at home)
- 7% are back in the office full time
As you can see from this data, the number of digital professionals that are back in the office is very minimal, and a large proportion are working fully remotely or working a hybrid model.
Decisions, decisions, decisions…
Although this may be the current working practices in the digital industry at the moment, this doesn’t mean that an employee’s choice and opinions have been considered. Therefore, the 42% of those working from home may miss visiting the office, and 7% that are back in the office full time may wish for more flexibility, which led us to our next question.
We asked respondents if they are comfortable being back in the office…
- 42% are happy to return to the office
- 58% would rather work from home
These results may have been determined by two factors – one being how your work environment can affect productivity and happiness, and two being how safe they feel returning to the office.
Is working from home effective for digital employees?
In our 2022 Digital Salary Survey, we asked some brand-new questions to show how well digital employees work from home.
Interestingly, we can see that the majority of respondents not only work well from home, but also have a dedicated workspace. This could be because, as we mentioned before, a proportion of the industry are already working remotely, even before the pandemic and therefore have dedicated home offices in place.
The fact that 0% of individuals do not work well from home is very interesting but isn’t surprising. Remote and home working is becoming the new norm and these figures reflect this.
Has Covid-19 impacted businesses directly?
It isn’t just the employee that have been affected by the pandemic. Businesses have had to make their fair share of changes, especially in the digital recruitment sector- whether that be with hiring new staff or having to make redundancies.
Hiring and headcount
We asked our questionnaire respondents if their company has made hires throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. A whopping 91% said that their company did hire new staff, and only 9% did not.
It seems that back in 2021, companies were taking a more reluctant approach to hiring, whereas in 2022, hiring is through the roof as we begin to get back to ‘business as usual’ after the impact of Covid-19. This is supported by the response that a minimal 10% of companies are still unsure whether they should hire or not.
Only 1% of this years’ respondents mentioned that their companies would consider using freelancers / contractors to fulfil hiring needs. Back in 2021, we saw a rise in contract work as there was a lot more financial uncertainty. Regardless of this, this is still a very low percentage – could this be because companies are unaware of the benefits of using a contractor?
After asking our questionnaire respondents how they feel the job/hiring market will be affected in 2022, 60% and the top answer was that retaining staff will be more of a challenge. We are aware that the candidate market is incredibly condensed right now, with more companies offering flexible working opportunities and a work/life balance being a higher priority due to the effects Covid-19 has had.
Looking ahead…
To summarise, it is clear that the pandemic has had an affect on the digital industry in various ways, including new work environments, hiring and a general change in priorities for both employees and employers.
Our final question for our respondents was to rate how the Covid-19 pandemic affected their outlook on their career, to which we received an average score of 7.2/10 – an increase from last year’s score, which can only mean that now that we have somewhat made it through the other side, employees are beginning to embrace the changes Covid-19 has made to their careers. It’s hard to say if the pandemic has had a negative effect as everyone is different, and the wide introduction of home working appealed to many as you can see from the collected data.
