Civil Engineering October 2021 | Vol 29 No 9

Civil Engineering October 2021 11 cannot be performed remotely. These include activities such as providing care, operating machinery, using laboratory equipment, working in a mine or on a construction site, and processing customer transactions in stores. The list of examples is very long. Due to the physical nature of most of their work activities, occupations such as transportation, food services, property maintenance and agriculture offer little or no opportunity for working from home. Building inspectors must go to a building or construction site. Medical staff must work in a healthcare facility to see patients. Many jobs declared essential by governments during the pandemic, including medical, maintenance, public services, policing etc. fall into a category of jobs with low remote work potential. In contrast, activities such as informa- tion gathering and processing, communi- cating with others, teaching, counselling and coding data can be done remotely. Other tasks can be performed from home in a crisis, but are much more effectively done in person. These activities include coaching, counselling and providing advice and feedback; building customer and colleague relationships; bringing new employees into a company; negotiating and making critical decisions; teaching and training; and work benefiting from collaboration, such as innovation, problem-solving and creativity (Findstack, 2021 and Forbes, 2021). To put this into perspective, Figures 1 and 2 provide a breakdown of the South African labour market by occupation and industry. This provides a good idea of which occupations (and their quantum) might be working from home. The data provided by Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Surveys (Quarter 3: 2020 and Quarter 1: 2021) over a 12-month period shows that occupations with the potential to be performed from home (for example, managers and professionals) make up a fairly small percentage of the overall labour force. Similarly, considering the percentages of employees by industry, an industry such as finance could be consid- ered as having the greatest potential to work from home. In addition to the employment by occupation and industry data, Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Surveys (Department of Statistics South Africa, 2020 & 2021) provide working from home statistics by occupation. Therefore, the Figure 2 Employment by industry, Q1 2020 to Q1 2021 Private households Community and social workers Finance Transport Trade Construction Utilities Manufacturing Mining Agriculture Q1, 2021 Q4, 2020 Q3, 2022 Q2, 2021 Q1, 2020 Employment (%) 30 20 15 10 5 0 7.52% 7.97% 7.64% 7.12% 8.04% 25 23.81% 23.65% 23.04% 22.97% 22.96% 16.87% 15.40% 16.59% 15.82% 15.37% 6.03% 6.28% 5.96% 6.27% 6.08% 19.89% 20.40% 20.50% 20.86% 20.28% 7.20% 7.77% 7.36% 7.55% 8.20% 0.77% 0.66% 0.61% 0.80% 0.71% 9.99% 9.93% 9.95% 10.31% 10.42% 2.64% 2.56% 2.86% 2.64% 2.66% 5.29% 5.39% 5.51% 5.66% 5.28%