Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, working from home has become the "new normal" for many UK workers, with face-to-face meetings replaced by video calls and power dressing rendered as passé as the fax machine. But what has really changed?

The UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Monday published a major report on the phenomenon. Comparing previous data from the decade before the pandemic with information provided by survey respondents, the ONS has uncovered many trends, not all of them predictable.

In 2020, the number of people working from home for some of the week rose just 9.4 percent, to 35.9 percent, although there was considerable geographical variation.

Those who worked from home to any degree worked an average of 32.3 hours per week, compared with those who never worked from home (27.7 percent). Full-time workers who worked mainly at home saw a fall in average hours between 2019 and 2020, while part-time workers saw a small rise.

The information and communication industry saw the highest proportion of homeworking, with 62 percent of workers having mainly, recently, or occasionally worked from home. This was followed by professional, scientific, and technical activities (56.1 percent) and financial services (54.2 percent). People who did the least homeworking were those employed in accommodation and food services (12.3 percent), transport and storage (18.6 percent) and retail (19.7 percent).

You might expect that reducing the average daily commute from 57 to six minutes would mean more leisure time for workers. However, those completing any work from home last year worked six hours of unpaid overtime on average per week, compared with 3.6 hours for those who never work from home. This echoes a trend seen since 2011.

A major shift in the daily habits of homeworkers concerns working start times. In April 2020 more homeworkers worked earlier in the morning, compared with those working away from home, while fewer worked later in the evening. September 2020 saw a reversal, with homeworkers working later in the morning and evening, pushing their average start time back to 10:45 a.m..

Workers at and away from home took approximately the same amount of time on breaks throughout their working day, although homeworkers took more breaks of shorter duration.

The sickness absence rate for homeworkers was less than half the rate (0.9 percent to 2.2 percent) of those who never worked from home. Possible explanations include homeworkers having less exposure to germs and also feeling better able to work at home while unwell.

The average gross weekly pay of workers who had recently worked from home was about 20 percent higher in 2020 than those who hadn't. Prior to 2020, people who worked mainly at home were paid on average 6.8 percent less than those who never worked from home. The study reported that "the gap has been decreasing over time, as homeworking has become a more widely accepted and encouraged form of flexible working." Those who worked at home non-exclusively fared best.

From 2012-2020, those working mainly from home were 37.7 percent less likely to have received a bonus than those who never worked from home. However, last year this changed dramatically, with those who worked recently and occasionally from home 41.9 and 27.6 percent more likely respectively to receive a bonus than those who never worked from home. This reflects the fact that employees in higher-paying jobs began working from home at the pandemic's outset.

People who mainly worked from home were also less than half as likely to be promoted than all other workers in the pre-pandemic period, "due to reduced face-to-face interaction with colleagues and managers."

The ONS believes accelerated homeworking will allow the current labor pool to expand, making jobs accessible to more people and "reduce the level of skill mismatch in the economy."

However, it also notes that remote working risks productivity losses from employees no longer interacting with colleagues. The report calls for homeworking to use technological advances to replicate such interaction, giving the "potential for these two factors to complement each other, rather than work against each other."