SALT LAKE CITY — The pandemic hit a year and a half ago and you were forced into working from home. You found yourself happily surprised that you were saving money on gasoline and meals and also spending more time with the kids. But now you are feeling a bit isolated, a touch of cabin fever, a hint of irritability and sorely miss the camaraderie with colleagues.
More than 32% of adults in Utah are now working from home and that’s the fifth-highest percentage of remote workers in the nation. The total number of adults in households with a remote worker in Utah is 737,725, says Teamflow.
Massachusetts and Maryland top the list with more than 37% of workers reporting remote work, reports Dan Spindle of ksltv.com. Mississippi has the smallest share of households with a remote worker at 11.1%.
Some 69% of employees are experiencing burnout symptoms while working from home, a survey found, which is up almost 20% from a similar survey in early May. The latest poll was conducted on July 10 and surveyed 284 U.S. employees.
KSL NewsRadio’s Dave Noriega spent 16 months in his mother’s basement while hosting the show and missed the real human connection.
Dave said virtual meetings — Face-timing or Zooming — with a co-worker is not the same as sitting across from a colleague while hosting a radio show.
“The connection is better. The humor is funnier,” he said. “Everything is better when we’re in the same room together.”
The hosts of KSL NewsRadio’s “Utah’s Morning News,” Amanda Dickson and Tim Hughes also weighed in on their remote-work experience.
Amanda said she feared a technical breakdown while working at home.
“Any kind of equipment failure. I can’t troubleshoot. I don’t have the engineering background to troubleshoot a mechanical failure, so I was sort of left on my own,” she said.
Tim also said he too longed for the interactions with other adults at work.
“That’s the big thing. You just feel disengaged sometimes from some of the processes that go on on a daily basis, a little bit left in the dark,” he said.
“Afternoon News” host Jeff Caplan said working from home was great at first, but then he went back to the studio for a while and is now back working remotely and hates it.
“I hate missing my coworkers. I have no right to complain. Other people at meatpacking plants work side by side through this whole thing. I have no right to complain,” he said.
Dave & Dujanovic can be heard weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon. on KSL NewsRadio. Users can find the show on the KSL NewsRadio website and app, a.s well as Apple Podcasts and Google Play.
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