As office-based workers continue to work remotely amid the ongoing pandemic, longer working hours have become the new normal in both the UK and US, while Canada and EU countries are back to their pre-quarantine working regime. This is according to data compiled by NordVPN Teams Analytics between April and August.

It suggests the average work week has increased by 15 and 10 hours in the US and UK respectively -- more than one extra work week per month. France, Canada, and Spain are back to their pre-quarantine working regime.

“The data has...revealed that the UK seems to start work an hour later than before the quarantine, but both the US and UK tend to work late. We also see that there is no significant drop in the usage of business VPNs during lunch time, which might suggest that lunch breaks have become shorter,” explains Juta Gurinaviciute, chief technology officer at NordVPN Teams.

The usage of business VPNs skyrocketed in April, which coincided with a widely-reported spike in the usage of home networks and devices.

“The sharp increase in cloud and remote access VPNs continues. Companies have taken action to get people to work online as fast as possible, but the new challenge is also to make sure they work as securely as possible. A recent Gartner survey found that more than 80% of company leaders plan to have their staff work remotely at least part-time,” Gurinaviciute added.

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