New Delhi: A survey of office goers and commuters has found that while employees in India are working fewer days from office due to the hybrid work models, with the office still not having made a comeback, they are spending more time commuting as compared to pre-2020, from the pre-pandemic era. Some of this may have to do with the distance to the workplace having increased with a change in residential circumstances, but also as the traffic appears to have surged.
The report ‘2023 on Wheels: How India Moved In Sync’ published by office commute platform MoveInSync has found that an average Indian spent 59 minutes to travel 20 km, that too one way, to work last year in important metropolitan cities, compared with just 51 minutes to cover 17 km in pre-pandemic times.
Photo: MoveInSync report
The report also finds that Indian employees spent 8% of their time (almost two hours) travelling to office and back when work from office was the norm. They now spent 15% more time on the roads as compared to the pre-pandemic days.
The average Indian employee worked only 2.8 days per week from office last year, as per this survey, with the number being the highest in the capital (NCR), where they worked 3.4 days per week from office. The lowest, it found, was in Kolkata, just 2.6 days per week.
The Times of India quotes Deepesh Agarwal, cofounder and chiet executive of MoveInSync, as saying, “We are observing a consistent trend of employees traveling for longer hours and longer distances as time progresses.”
Photo: MoveInSync report
MoveInSync was founded in 2009 and describes itself as an employee commute platform.
The TomTom Traffic Index has concluded earlier that in Bengaluru, India’s second-most congested city in the world, it takes around 30 minutes to cover a distance of 10 km within the city, “whereas the same distance can be covered in less than 13 minutes in Dubai.”
The Journal of Transport and Health this month has reported, based on a study in South Korea, that commuting time and depression are correlated. “Long commuting time was significantly associated with increased depressive symptoms”, note the researchers. The study is based on the Korean Working Conditions Survey, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of 23,415 selected wage workers aged between 20 and 59 years.