When the COVID pandemic swept in, so did the notion of working remotely. Old rules of the office went out the door when dress slacks were swapped for sweatpants as employees were introduced to a new way of working.
In late 2022-early 2023, as the world began to ease many pandemic policies, several companies such as Twitter, Amazon and Disney instituted a return to office for their workers.
While pandemic-era work initiatives are attempting to shift back, the desire for work flexibility, not to commute, and a better work-life balance for employees have not. The backlash over return-to-work initiatives has been immense at times and the pushback from employees is showing in the growth of some companies.
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Companies that are allowing more flexible work for their employees are winning, according to data from a report by The Flex Index, released in July. The Flex Index covers 6,710 companies containing 100 million employees.
According to the report, workplaces that allowed for fully flexible work – meaning either entirely remote or giving employees the option to going to the office – increased their workforce by more than twice the rate of their in-office counterparts, growing 5.6% over the last 12 months.
This growth dropped to 4.1% for hybrid models and bottomed out at 2.6% for full-time in-office companies.
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This data trends with other reports that show the desire to go remote, with 98% of employees wanting to continue with remote work, at least partially, for the rest of their careers, according to Buffer’s yearly 2023 report on the State of Remote Work.
According to Flex, the minimum number of days required in the office had a major impact on headcount growth. Separated by days in the office, over 12 months’ growth dropped each additional day employees were required to be in the office.
Rob Sadow, CEO and co-founder of Scoop Technologies, Inc., spoke to FOX News Digital and explained his views on where the future of the work environment is likely to stay.
Sadow explained how working from home during the pandemic “unlocked” a new view of what balancing work and life in a flexible environment looked like.
“In some ways, it’s almost like a new frontier of the way that we think about freedom. Flexibility is the new frontier of freedom, and it’s very American. And I think people are very unwilling to give that up,” Sadow said.
Flexible work and structured hybrid schedules show to have outpaced full-time office work models across variously sized companies. The biggest difference was seen in companies with headcounts between 500-5,000 employees. Over the last three months alone, companies of that size with flexible work policies (either fully flexible or structured hybrid variations) have tripled their headcount growth over full-time in-office peers.
Over a 12-month time period, flexible companies with 500-5,000 employees have more than doubled in size.
This growth trend also held true for companies outside the tech industry, showing that companies requiring full-time in-office roles as a whole are struggling to find talent.
Sadow argued companies requiring more days in office will likely have to provide “significant compensation increases” to make up for the lack of a flexible environment. He also said benefits like commute reimbursements and covering in-office food costs would be likely additions to bring employees back to the office.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that even stretches into things like childcare over time so that people feel like they’re better covered when they’re not at home,” he added. “I think it’s going to be increasingly difficult for companies that require employees five days a week in the office to compete with companies that are offering more flexibility now.”
Over the last few years, much of fully remote work has evolved into hybrid work. According to surveys from Pew Research Center, as of February 2023, 35% of those with teleworkable jobs are still working fully remote, while 41% have shifted to a hybrid model.
Even with a shift to hybrid work providing greater flexibility than full-time office roles, a third (34%) of hybrid workers working mostly remote expressed the desire to work fully remote. Of those working from home some of the time, 18% said they would like to work remote full-time, and 32% said they’d like to work mostly remote, according to the Pew Research Surveys.
“And so the place where I think we’re at now is employers, and when I say employers, I really mean executives. Employers largely believe that if employees spend no time in office, something gets lost,” said Sadow. “And so I think executives at most companies are saying, look, we need some time in the office. Employees, on the other hand, I think are vehemently against being in the office five days a week and largely believe that they were very productive during the pandemic and don’t want to give up on those gains. And so what we’re finding in our data is that most companies are ending up in the middle, two to three days in the office.”
While many companies have been shifting back to in-office policies, others have plans to move away from stationary office environments.
One of these major companies making the shift is AirBnb with their Live and Work Anywhere Program. “Today’s startups have embraced remote work and flexibility, and I think this will become the predominant way that we all work 10 years from now. This is where the world is going,” said a statement released by the company in 2022.
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According to metrics from an AirBnb spokesperson, the company has seen a massive increase in recruiting since instituting its Live and Work Anywhere Program, having nearly 10 million people visit AirBnb’s career page in the past year. This is double from the prior year.
Since the program was instituted, the most recent survey shows that 89% of employees stated that they “would recommend” Airbnb as a great place to work. This positive sentiment among employees is the highest it’s been since the company started surveying employees in 2015, according to the metrics provided by the spokesperson.
AirBnb cited that moving to a fully remote team will enable them to “hire and retain” the best people, without limitations from office commuting radiuses, saying the best people “live everywhere.”
“I think the US companies will hire more internationally over time,” said Sadow, highlighting that hiring globally will increase companies’ ability to access people with the exact skills for the role. “And as you hire more internationally, the argument for why people can’t move around or go between office and office I think starts to be a weaker argument,”.
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