Professionals from industries such as software and IT, media and communications, and transportation and logistics in India are the most anxious about returning to work, according to LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence Index.

The primary reasons for the professionals’ anxiety include risk of exposure, poor sanitation, and lack of workplace policies.

According to the report, 65 per cent of software and IT employees feel exposure to those not taking safety guidelines seriously is a serious concern with returning to the workplace, followed by 61 per cent of media professionals and 61 per cent of logistics employees.

“One in four software and IT (25 per cent) employees also say lack of workplace sanitisation or cleanliness is dissuading them from going back to their offices,” the report said.

On the contrary, employees from the recreation and travel (46 per cent) and consumer goods (39 per cent) industries are eager to return to work “will return to work as soon as they are allowed to.”

Overall, the Indian workforce’s confidence is on a steady rise as per the report. Though employees from small businesses are worried about job security, employees are overall confident about their personal finance.

Approximately “one in three professionals anticipating their personal savings to increase, while two in five expect their personal spending to stay the same in the next six months,” the report said.

“However, this optimism fades when it comes to job security, as the Workforce Confidence Index shows SMB employees (1-200 workers) are less confident about holding on to their jobs than large enterprise workers (10,000 or more employees). With low cash reserves and on-off lockdowns across several cities, business sustenance for SMBs continues to be a challenging affair. This is corroborative of the cycle of informality and limited productivity that SMBs across India continue to battle each day,” it said.

The index is based on the responses of 5,553 professionals in India who were surveyed between June 1 and July 26.