Many company executives now regret their initial return-to-office plans, as 80% say they would have approached it differently if they understood employee preferences. While some firms are requiring more in-office time, citing collaboration needs, others are scaling back requirements due to retention issues. Successful companies like EY are listening to employees, addressing concerns over childcare and commuting, and seeing office attendance rise as a result. However, full office occupancy remains below pre-pandemic levels as hybrid work grows in popularity. It will take time for companies to settle on arrangements that satisfy both employees and management.
The main downside to the mass shift to work from home is, and I say this as someone who cannot work from home, some people that should really be hybrid are instead convincing companies that its better to shift a bunch of their “touch labor” onto whoever is onsite. And of course it does not come with any pay adjustment for the people absorbing that workload.
Work from home is great as a general concept, but only for people who genuinely have a job that can be done remotely. I’ve become “touch labor” for departments entirely unrelated to my own and suddenly have managers who aren’t even mine trying to order me around to do stuff for them.