Fewer than one in five Australian business owners say that productivity has been reduced with employees working from home, according to the January Sensis Business Index.

The index showed just 18% of owners saw reduced productivity, with 29% seeing an increase in productivity, and 53% saying working from home had no impact.

The Finance and Insurance sector saw the biggest uplift with 52% of owners saying productivity increased and 36% within the Health and Community Services sector also experienced productivity gains. The sector with the most significant negative impact was Transport, with a 30% reduction in productivity, followed by Construction at 29% and Wholesale at 25%. The sectors where productivity was unaffected the most were Communications, Property and Business Services at 65%, followed by Hospitality at 62%.

Sensis CEO John Allan said the results showed that the vast majority of workers could be trusted to perform their jobs at home: “The fact that nearly one in three businesses (29%) saw an actual increase in productivity will make it hard for employers to force their employees back into the office full-time.”

The survey also looked at owners’ attitude to workers going back into the office, with a split between working from home and working from the office proving to be the most popular at 48%.

“For those wanting to work just from home it will be difficult,” said Allan. “Just 13% of owners were agreeable to this option. 40% were also keen to have their employees return to the office full-time. That was a figure much higher than we had anticipated as in December that figure was just 19%.”

The state that most wanted their workers to return to the office full-time was Tasmania at 57%. The state least demanding their staff come back to the office full-time was Queensland at 35%. Nearly one in five (18%) of South Australian business owners were comfortable with their workforce working from home full-time.

The Health sector at 57% was highest in returning to work full-time, followed by Manufacturing at 51% and Hospitality at 48%. Surprisingly, only 29% of retail owners wanted staff to return full-time to the office. Transport was the happiest with a hybrid model approach at 61% followed by Retail at 55% and Wholesale at 54%. Construction/Building was most comfortable with a 100% work from home week at 21% followed by Communications, Property and Business Services at 19% and both Retail and Wholesale at 16%.

The survey canvassed 1,000 business owners/managers across all states and across 10 business sectors. It was conducted by data insights platform Glow in the last week of January. Of the businesses surveyed, 22% had 50 employees or more and 53% of businesses had been operating for more than 10 years.