We carried a survey and asked our members members their feelings about resuming various activities and the COVID-19 Pandemic: when might you return to your office full time; when might you be prepared to attend a large work related gathering; when might you resume international travel. We thought it would be interesting to extend the survey across the network to see how attitudes might compare across regions and across the Atlantic.
Note that this is not a scientific survey; these are self-selected responses and a relatively small sample size; nevertheless the results are still informative. The full results are attached.
Overall, about half (49 percent) of respondents said they are prepared to return to their workplaces full time. New York was the outlier with only 29 percent saying they were prepared to do so; at the other end of the scale, three-quarters of Parisian respondents and 83 percent of Lyonnaise said they were ready to get back to the office.
As for attending a small (10-25) work-related seminar, in the US attitudes were fairly ambivalent; 44 percent said they might do this now or within three months, while 32 percent said they would wait until 2021 or until a vaccine was available – but in Europe over three-quarters of respondents said they would attend a small event now or within the next three months. Enthusiasm for larger (50-150 people) events was similarly higher in Europe: 57 percent said they this happening no later than three to six months while in the U.S., 65 percent said maybe by the end of the year or later.
Attitudes diverged again when it came to attending large gala-type events. In Europe nearly half (48 percent) said not until next year or until there is a vaccine or treatment, and almost two-thirds (63 percent) or U.S. respondents agreed. However, in Europe another third said they could see doing this now or within three months, more than twice the positive response rate (14 percent) in the U.S.
Europe’s borders are reopening, and people are taking advantage of that: 83 percent of European respondents said they are ready to travel domestically now. However only 28 percent of U.S.-based respondents said the same. And for international travel; 55 percent of European respondents said they were prepared to travel internationally now or within the next three months; at the other end of the spectrum, a similar number (53 percent) of U.S. respondents said they’d wait until 2021 or until there is a vaccine to resume international travel.
Prepared by Todd Schwartz, Executive Director, Cincinnati Chapter