Will the pandemic completely change what work looks like in the D.C. region? A recent study from the Transportation Planning Board at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments provides some clues.

The survey asked more than 4,500 private businesses, nonprofits, and federal, state, and local governments in the region about telework during and after the pandemic.

It looks like teleworking is here to stay. More than half of employers who responded to the survey said they anticipated continuing telework at current levels or increasing telework options beyond pre-pandemic levels, while 12% thought they’d continue telework at their pre-pandemic levels, and 23% anticipated cutting back telework options to even less than they were before the pandemic.

The interest in continuing telework isn’t especially surprising, given that employers are seeing benefits from it. Eighty percent said managers reported benefits of managing remotely. Of those, almost 3 in 10 said managers had better communication with employees and greater worker productivity.

Most employees seemed pretty happy with telework arrangements — at least according to their employers. Ninety-two percent of employers said their employees had reported benefits of working from home, including not commuting, a more casual work environment, personal cost savings, and higher productivity.

But, of course, there’s a downside to working from home, too. About half of the employers surveyed said they’d documented some challenges with teleworking during the pandemic. Childcare, isolation, and conflicts with spouses or partners at home were the top problems.

Increasing telework was by far the biggest step employers were considering to curb the impact of the virus on their workforces in the future, according to the survey. But some said they were considering other shifts in work scheduling and structure, too.

Some employers said they were considering other ways to change how many people cross each others’ paths at work after reopening, including instituting staggered or flexible hours (62%), compressed work schedules (28%). Strategies for keeping people safe while in the office were less on employers’ minds — 18% said they were considering social distancing measures in the workplace, 9% said they might require masks or other protective gear, and 9% said they might make hand sanitizer or other cleanliness options more widely available.

The survey results don’t draw distinctions between attitudes toward telework across different industries. But telework policies have certainly not been universal during the pandemic. The federal government, for instance, has left much of the decision making on working remotely — and when to stop — up to individual agencies. Local leaders have expressed concerns about federal pressure to bring government employees back into the office — though some might not come back to the office at all.