In our last round-up of useful and/or unexpected statistics shared via the ResponseSource Press Release Wire for this year, we look at the important things: staying safe, preparing for upcoming challenges and sharing good times with the people we care about. Also, the correct way to eat soup. Check out the relevant numbers below – happy feature-writing for December!

Life

A majority of those working in the UK and Ireland are reluctant to return to the office, according to a European study by global workplace creation experts Unispace. The survey of 3,000 office workers, 2,750 employers in leadership roles at organisations with 50+ employees, and interviews with global senior leaders in real estate, HR and operations found that 67% of employees have reservations about returning to in-office working. Faced with a return, 75% would prefer their employers pay for their travel and 93% would make improvements to their workplace. Read more here.

The workplace of early life, AKA school, is getting a bad rap with UK parents – two thirds of whom don’t think school does enough to prepare youngsters for life events. Over half believe lessons on death, bereavement and grief should be covered as part of the curriculum, finds new research from the charity Project Eileen. Other perennial lessons parents think their children need are personal finance (72%) and sex education (60%). In fact, life skills are now valued by parents more than traditional lessons – fewer than half believe the subjects of woodwork, algebra, geology and poetry should be taught in schools. Read more here.

‘How to Use Sporks’ might be another lesson a lot of parents would put on the school curriculum for their kids if given the choice, considering how much of a challenge dinnertime is for 70% of them. For a study with doddl, over half of British parents (54%) admitted that their children don’t use a knife and fork properly during meal times, with 60% admitting their children use their hands instead. How this works with soup or mashed potato is not covered in the results, but check out the rest here.

Love

According to those taking part in a recent study from London-based human intelligence platform Streetbees, love means… never keeping your COVID-19 vaccination status a secret. At least, to 53% of single people dating in the UK right now, who believe they have the right to know whether the person they’re seeing has been vaccinated or not. Read more here.

Christmas

Is your workplace holding a Christmas party this year beyond an awkward video call? Just 36% of UK workers nationwide are having company shindigs for the festive season, according to a survey by Moneypenny cited here. 

And if you haven’t started your Christmas shopping yet, here are some numbers likely to make you feel even more guilty about it (sorry). Secret Santa name generator Drawnames.co.uk has found that 40% of people are getting their Christmas shopping done earlier this year. And just under a third of us are feeling more generous, or are in a financial position to spend more on loved ones/tolerated ones we have to buy for – 32% plan to spend more this year, with an average planning to shell out 13% more. 30% are shopping locally, and 28% want to make things extra-special this festive season. Not long to go – read more here.

…and climate change

One area some people are worried they’ll have to spend more on is net zero – as found by energy retailer Love Energy Savings in a new survey, many UK households are concerned they will be expected to pay for Government plans on climate change. 44% of UK households worry they’ll have to foot the bill for net zero, and this isn’t miserly – 32% of people said they just can’t afford to install alternative heating. Keep warm, and read more here.

We provide these as a jumping-off point for your own research and you should perform your own checks on any of these stories – a few tips in this post. If you’d like to source experts, further information or case studies for any of these topics or something else you’re working on, head to the (free) Journalist Enquiry Service to save hours of research and expand your network of sources.