Full-time Brits spend £1,738 a year commuting — is working from home the answer?

New research[1] by OddsMonkey has found that many British workers are spending around a week of their year commuting to and from their workplace, all while paying £1,738 for the privilege.

Our survey polled 2,000 full-time, part-time, and self-employed people in the UK to discover more about their commuting habits, as well as how they felt about working from home.

Commuting is time consuming, expensive, and stressful

We discovered that the average full-time British worker who doesn’t work from home will spend around 164 hours commuting to and from their workplace annually — that’s almost one week every year[2].

What’s more, these full-time employees are paying a hefty average commuting cost of £1,738 per year — that’s £7.46 each working day. With the median UK salary for full-time employees standing at £29,669[3], this cost represents a sizeable 6% chunk of annual pre-tax earnings to the typical Brit.

If the time and money costs weren’t enough, we also found that one in three full-time employees in the UK found their daily commute to be a stressful experience, showing that getting to work can also be mentally taxing.

Some sectors have greater commuting disparity

There’s even travel time and cost disparity between different industries. We found that the six sectors whose workers paid more than a pricey £10 daily each day were among those travelling the furthest with average commutes of over 45 minutes:

Working from home is the preferred option (and it’s more productive!)

One way for employees to get around the time-consuming and costly commute is to work from home on a more regular basis. This is something that was reflected in our research: we found that almost three quarters of workers would like to have the option to work from home.

And, most people have a positive outlook when it comes to working at home. Only one in four full-time workers and one in three part-time workers would prefer never to work remotely, and this drops to one in ten for those who are self-employed.

What’s more, we found that 59% of workers believe that they are more productive when they work at home, with just 13% saying their productivity suffers.

Our research also identified some key reasons why people like to work from home, ranging from less wardrobe stress to reduced dog care costs. Some of the most popular perks were:

• Being able to wear what you want — 48%
• Having the ability to work environment more — 43%
• Being home to accept deliveries — 45%
• Spending time at home with family or pets — 39%
• Getting more time to do household chores — 37%
• Saving money on childcare costs — 13%
• Saving money on doggy day care — 8%

Peter Watton, spokesperson for OddsMonkey commented: “The results from this research show that the vast majority of UK workers are having to commit long stretches of time to getting to and from their workplace, especially those that are full-time.

“And, with the daily commute proving to be both costly and stressful, on top of being a time sink, it’s little surprise that the majority of Brits would like to have the option to work from home. Our survey has also found that most people think that they work more productively from home, as well as being able to benefit from a variety of perks that make their life easier.

“We wouldn’t be surprised if more people found ways to reduce their daily commute in the future. This could be by working from home more, or, alternatively, working less hours and topping up earnings with a side hustle, such as matched betting.”

You can find more advice about picking up a side hustle here. You may also be interested in finding out more about matched betting for additional income, or even turning matched betting into your main income.

Further information regarding the study can be found by getting in touch with ____.

[1] Study source: Research conducted via Onepoll on 2,000 British adults during February 2019.

[2] Based on a typical full-time employee who takes the statutory 28 holidays.

[3] Based on median gross weekly earnings of £569 (ONS) over 52.143 weeks in a year.