Hong Kong is in its feelings after the last 18 months

Hong Kong readers have mixed feelings about the last year and what's to come

After months and months (and months...) of living amid a pandemic, things have certainly changed. While we connect with our audience everyday, we realised we hadn't really checked in on our readers.

At the end of this summer, we put out our annual readership survey, to get some feedback on how we could serve our audience better to get a feel for what they're doing more of and what they're doing less of, and well, just to see how they were doing. Drawing on the impressive number of responses from our readers, here’s a snippet of what we found.

WFH is the new black

The pandemic has forced change upon all aspects of life, and the workplace is no exception. While millions around the globe struggle with the repercussions of losing their jobs, a great number of people shifted to working from home.

For Hongkongers, 10.9 percent of our pollers were happy to ditch the commute and office wardrobe said they really thrived while working from home. A majority (57.2 percent) thought it was okay and made the best of it, but some are no closer to giving up the office with 31.9 percent saying they find WFH to be isolating.

After 18 months of living in a pandemic you are...

For many of us, nearly two years into the pandemic has altered our emotional landscape. Some of our readers are still stressed (26.7 percent), while an equal amount are feeling optimistic and hopeful (26.6 percent). Those that identified with being stressed preferred to work from home. Those who identified positively (feeling content or hopeful) are inherently social and are looking forward to returning to ‘normal’, whatever that is, and therefore didn’t enjoy working from home either.

While it hasn't been easy, there are certainly some silver linings. Our readers found their groove and work-life balance as work arrangements became more flexible, and it was incredible to see the city come together to help many of our favourite businesses live on.

Our recent Time Out survey not only covered attitudes toward returning to the city, but it also covered our readers’ values and social behaviours towards consumption, health, and finances. To find out more about how these insights can help support your future marketing needs contact tim.webb@timeout.com and wing.miu@timeout.com.