Top trends in hybrid work

Employers have several factors to consider when deciding how to approach the return-to-office conversation. But as one HR department’s experience shows, employee feedback is perhaps the most crucial.

Global Payments, the Atlanta-based financial technology firm, faced a post-pandemic scenario typical of many large employers that shifted to remote work. In 2020, the company was “pretty much fully remote,” according to Andréa Carter, senior executive VP and CHRO. A gradual reopening of offices followed as Global Payments allowed workers time to assimilate back into the workplace.

By 2022, the company implemented a formal RTO policy that required employees to return to the office at least four days per week. A subsequent review of the company’s talent acquisition data raised some concerns about its stance, however.

Flexibility became a pain point for employees, said Carter, who explained that her team produces a monthly attrition report for the company’s leadership. These reports outline why current employees leave Global Payments and why candidates fall out of the hiring process.

Attrition data showed that flexibility ranked seventh in the top 10 list of reasons employees had left the company. That result aligns with other research establishing a link between RTO policies and retention issues. Carter said Global Payments used its findings — combined with the results of separate employee pulse surveys — to make a change to its RTO approach.

Instead of a mandatory four days per week in office, the company allowed employees who could work a hybrid schedule to work between two and four days per week in-office as well as one to three days per week remotely.

A few months after the change, flexibility fell out of the top 10 causes of attrition at Global Payments, and “we saw attrition overall decrease in the organization,” Carter said.

Avoiding a ‘black hole’

The results of Global Payments’ policy change are just one part of the story. Carter explained that the company’s leadership did not implement the updated hybrid work policy without first showing the survey findings to employees.

“It wasn’t just the leadership team going into a black hole and coming up with it,” Carter said. “We engaged our team members to look at the data to help come up with a proposal that we thought would be mutually beneficial for our team members and our organization.”

Specifically, Carter said she had the company’s HR vice presidents reach out to employee resource groups including its “diversity action team,” present the flexibility statistics and engage with ERG representatives to gauge how employees felt about the subject.

“That was important because we wanted stakeholder buy-in [and] our team members were critical stakeholders in this process,” she added.

Asked why employees appeared to respond to the change, Carter said Global Payments’ workforce values flexibility for several reasons. Some may be part of the “sandwich generation” of employees that is simultaneously responsible for caring for younger as well as older relatives. Others may have appreciated flexibility in order to address mental health and well-being concerns that emerged since the pandemic.

Interestingly, Carter said that she has not seen much of a difference in terms of employees coming into the office since the policy change. The company does not formally track attendance, she noted, “but you can gauge.” Aside from the camaraderie that comes with seeing co-workers and company-hosted team appreciation activities, Carter said the real value of flexibility may simply be that it is there if employees need it.

“When you think about what the pandemic did to people from that perspective, just knowing that they have the flexibility to react or respond to something that’s going on in their personal lives makes it a lot easier for [them] to come into the office,” she said.

Maintaining a robust data function

Data is central to this story, and it’s been central to Carter’s approach as CHRO. She said the creation of a dedicated people analytics team was one of her first goals upon assuming her current role.

“I think oftentimes people look at the CHRO job as we’re emotional because we are for employees and team members,” Carter said. “What we’ve got to do as CHROs is use data to inform and influence decisions.”

“You can’t go to your CEO and say ‘we have to do this because it’s the right thing to do,’” Carter said; while that may be true, CHROs must be able to say “it’s the right thing to do because” and then use data to back it up.

The company’s attrition and attraction data reporting is run through Workday. Pulse surveys require a bit more in the way of coordination, Carter explained, because the company wants to avoid survey fatigue. Another priority for 2024 concerns the results of the company's recent global engagement survey, which it is currently analyzing.

“We had a very high participation rate in the survey, and so we are excited to peel the layers of that onion back to further hear from our team members about what it is from a human capital perspective that we need to focus on to continue to make this a better place to work and to move our culture forward,” Carter said.

The number of job postings including the term “hybrid work” rose 29% in the second quarter of 2023 compared to the same period last year, according to a report by GlobalData. 

Meanwhile, job ads with “remote work” and “work from home” declined from this time last year, the report found.

“Overall interest in hybrid roles has remained intact as companies seem to be trying to strike a balance between complying with return-to-office requirements and offering work flexibility as well. Businesses across certain industries are weighing more on offering flexibility in work, resulting in an uptick in hybrid roles,” said Sherla Sriprada, a business fundamentals analyst at GlobalData.

When it comes to return-to-office plans, companies and employees need to strike a balance, recent reports find. 

While about 22% of U.S. companies with remote-capable workers said they want employees to return to work, only 15% of those workers want to go back into the office, an August report by the Integrated Benefits Institute found.

About a third of workers who were mandated to return to the office said their likelihood of staying with the company had decreased, according to a June report by The Conference Board. And some employees are refusing to return, the report found. While more than half of companies are requiring or strongly encouraging employees to work from the office, 80% are still working from home or keeping a hybrid schedule.

Workers in North America are working from the office less than their counterparts in other countries, according to an August report by AWA, a global workplace consultancy. The global average is 1.75 days per week, while in North America it is 1.45 days per week. And, while office attendance increased to an average of 35% globally, in North America it remained unchanged, the report found.

Hybrid work schedules are growing worldwide, with employees in the U.S. spending an average of 2 days per week in the office. Globally, employees spend 3.1 days in the office, with attendance peaking on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, according to a report from JLL, a global commercial real estate and investment management company.

For the most part, employees are returning to the office. About 87% of international organizations are encouraging employees to work on-site at least some of the time. In fact, only 20% of employees work completely remotely or up to two days in the office, down from 39% a year ago.

“As more workers return to the office several days a week, we’re continuing to learn about the shifting preferences for ways of working and how we can better deploy technology and flexible arrangements to meet these expectations,” Neil Murray, CEO of Work Dynamics for JLL, said in a statement.

In a survey of more than 20,000 office workers, in-person attendance appears to vary across regions and countries, ranging from two days in the U.S. and U.K. to more than four days in China, India and South Korea. The differences are driven by a combination of cultural nuances, living arrangements and other structural factors, according to the report.

Employers said they value in-person work as a significant contributor to employee productivity, which they listed as one of the top three reasons to entice employees back. They also noted that enhanced office technology and improved amenities play a critical role in attracting workers to come to the office.

Workers, on the other hand, said they value the physical office as a hub for socialization, innovation and professional growth. However, they noted the top barriers to working from the office include commuting, noise and a lack of privacy. Murray said the key will be creating spaces that meet a mix of collaborative and focused work needs.

About two-thirds of employees now work in the office full time, according to a recent Owl Labs report, up from 41% in 2022. However, only 22% said a full-time in-office schedule was their preferred working arrangement, and 58% said they were “coffee badging,” or only going to the office for a few hours to show their face.

Despite the ongoing importance of workplace schedule flexibility, most employees say they’re excluded from discussions about hybrid work and return-to-office mandates, according to Eagle Hill survey. At the same time, nearly half said they’d consider leaving their job if their company reduced their flexibility. 

The most successful return-to-office policies include engagement strategy, two HR experts previously told HR Dive. Instead of exit interviews, leaders can use “stay interviews” to gauge employee wants and needs, including factors such as schedule flexibility, employee resource groups, comfortable and collaborative spaces and even design aesthetics such as lighting.

When companies implement rigid return-to-office (RTO) mandates, they’re likely to drive away high-performing employees, women and millennials, according to findings from consulting firm Gartner’s HR practice.

High performers’ intent to stay was 16% lower with employers that have strict RTO requirements — double the rate of average employees (8%), the survey found. Among women and millennials, the intent to stay was 11% and 10% lower, respectively, according to the 2,080 knowledge workers surveyed in May and June 2023. In a separate June 2023 survey of 3,500 employees, nearly half said their company’s RTO mandates prioritize what leaders want versus what employees need to do good work, Gartner noted.

“Mandated on-site requirements can carry very steep costs for talent attraction and retention. This is especially true for high-performers, women and millennials — three employee segments who greatly value flexibility,” Gartner HR practice Director Caitlin Duffy stated in a press release. “Often these costs far outweigh the moderate benefits to employee engagement and effort,” Duffy said.

As stakeholders continue to adjust to evolving RTO and hybrid work practices, there have been successes: Financial technology firm Global Payments refashioned a mandatory RTO policy into a hybrid approach after employee feedback revealed that the lack of flexibility was one of the top reasons people were leaving the company.

Before rolling out the new approach, the company’s HR president reached out to employee resource groups, including its diversity action team, the CHRO recently told HR Dive. Knowing they have flexibility to respond to something going on in their personal life makes it easier for them to come into the office, the CHRO said.

Leading an RTO trend that fosters inclusiveness and belonging, Minnesota-based The Coven offers co-working space designed with community in mind. This creates a sense of physical and psychological safety, which in turn allows members to focus on the work, one of the co-founders previously explained.

For many employees, working in-office is simply more pragmatic. While the preference leans toward remote work whenever possible, professionals will take office-based roles if those roles provide the best career growth, according to a recruitment expert.

Flexibility has positive results, especially with high-performers, women and millennials, the Gartner survey found. For instance, high performers feel they proved themselves and maintained high levels of performance throughout the pandemic and remote work, but see mandates as a signal they still can’t be trusted to work autonomously to make the best choices about how their work gets done, Gartner said.

“Losing high-performers to attrition cost[s] organizations in terms of productivity, difficulty in backfilling the role, and the overall loss of high-quality talent available to fill critical positions,” HR practice director Duffy said.

Increased flexibility and the ability to work from home during the pandemic had a positive affect on the ability of women to manage work and life priorities in a holistic, integrated way, Duffy added. Women also report experiencing fewer microaggressions and biases compared to when working in an office.

For millennials, the generation now most likely to have caregiving responsibilities, Gartner data found their performance was lower at organizations with RTO mandates, the firm noted.

It recommended four best practices HR leaders can consider if their organizations seek to formalize an in-office work requirement:

1. Motivate, rather than mandate, by designing office spaces and hybrid policies that make everyone feel capable, autonomous and connected;
2. Focus on yearly, not weekly, attendance requirements;
3. Enable employees to shape the policy; and
4. Provide clear reasons for requiring employees to work on-site.

Employees say they’re generally excluded from discussions about hybrid work and the return to the office — yet flexibility remains a must-have benefit.

Nearly 7 in 10 respondents to an Eagle Hill survey said their employer has not asked for their input when it comes to remote and hybrid work preferences. 

But employees continue to have strong opinions on the matter, with nearly half of surveyed workers saying they would consider leaving their job if their company reduced workplace flexibility, including 61% of millennials. 

Respondents indicated that certain tasks benefit from being done in person, including highly social activities like integrating new team members, team building and managing team members. On the other hand, workers indicated that activities requiring individual contemplation — deep thinking, research and focus time — benefit from being done remotely. 

Similarly, respondents said they could see the benefits of being at the office, naming more socialization, improved collaboration, the ability to leave work at the office, greater productivity and fewer distractions as chief among them. They cited reduced work-life balance, more stress, increased costs and commuting time as negatives, however. 

Just as prior studies have found, Eagle Hill’s research shows employee preferences are not one-size-fits-all when it comes to work arrangements. Respondents were split almost equally on whether they were more productive spending the full day in the office, or only part of the day. 

Experts have cautioned employers to approach return-to-office mandates with thoughtfulness and to consider their specific business goals in tailoring their policies. 

Office utilization rates in the Americas still lagged behind pre-pandemic averages in 2023, averaging a 31% utilization rate across all business sectors compared to the 64% pre-pandemic global average, according to CBRE’s 2023-2024 Global Workplace & Occupancy Insights report.

With square footage per person falling and space sharing increasing worldwide, the average global occupancy, or number of people assigned to a number of seats, has surpassed 100% for the first time ever, the report states.

Forty-three percent of organizations globally plan to decrease their portfolio size by more than 30% in the next three years, CBRE said. Companies are using new performance metrics like utilization rates and employee sentiment instead of older ones, like square feet per seat, to make space decisions, the real estate services firm noted.

The report, which examined 66 global clients across 5,808 buildings representing almost 350 million square feet of space, examined trends across office occupiers that included remote work, the supply and demand of space, portfolio optimization strategies and workplace experience measurement. Despite companies using progressively more efficient portfolio and space planning, the combination of hybrid work and underutilized office space has led to an imbalance of office space, CBRE said. 

The decrease in average office utilization suggests that office attendance has plateaued, the firm said, thus it believes the imbalance will not resolve without “well-communicated changes” to hybrid policies, further reductions in portfolio size or workplace experience improvements that attract employees to the office. 

Over the last three years, hybrid work has led building owners to reduce their portfolios and operators to find planning efficiencies, CBRE said. The average square footage per person fell 22% in 2023, driven in part by a 44% increase in collaborative space globally since 2021, CBRE said. Since January 2020, 62% of survey participants said they reduced their office portfolio size, with an additional 63% expecting to make further reductions by 2026. 

Just 29% of overall respondents said they plan to expand their portfolio in the next three years, but organizations with less than 12 million square feet of space, which did not reduce much space in the past three years, are planning more significant reductions in the near future, the report noted. 

Of the firm’s clients that plan to optimize their portfolios, 75% said they plan to cut underutilized space and 82% plan to increase space-sharing, while 67% said they will accommodate headcount growth in the existing portfolio.

To prepare for this new level of collaboration and space-sharing, commercial real estate teams plan to increase the use of “micro level utilization data” — gathered through sensors and network activity — to measure employee work styles, reduce occupancy costs per visit and dynamically manage buildings, CBRE said. 

The report predicts that commercial real estate leaders will need to create a new scorecard that combines CRE data with HR, finance and IT to track the workplace’s impact on employee performance, operational priorities, financial goals and ESG objectives. 

While traditionally office capacity was based on the number of desks and offices that could be assigned to people for focus work, the report states that today’s hybrid employees are more likely to share a variety of space types for collaboration and focus throughout the day. 

To understand the full planning opportunity that hybrid work provides, organizations must plan for alternative work seats, spaces other than desks where employees can work comfortably for an extended period, CBRE says. By including alternative work seats in their capacity calculations, building leadership can measure hybrid workplace performance and planning efficiencies more accurately, as these seats account for the space where collaboration occurs, it says. 

The report provides four new office design concepts that incorporate current collaborative, sustainable and flexible work trends: the Boulevard, a focus-based arrangement of seats where one major thoroughfare connects curated collision points; the District, an activity-based setup where employees share desks and organize where and how they want to work; the Plaza, an event-based model that allows a higher proportion of collaboration space; and the Park, a collaboration-based hub mostly used for trainings and other events.

Most employers haven’t adapted their practices to support the shift to flexible work, with 3 out of 4 workers saying their employer hasn’t provided training to handle it, according to a report by TechSmith Corp., Global Workplace Analytics and Caryatid Workplace Consultancy.

Five years ago, fewer than 5% of employees had the option to work remotely on a regular basis, according to the report; now 58% of workers have the option at least some of the time. As a result, leaders and managers need hybrid-related skills such as establishing team or meeting norms and leading a distributed workforce.

“The pandemic forced the majority of organizations into hybrid work practically overnight, with no time to consider how to support new practices,” Wendy Hamilton, CEO of TechSmith, said in a statement.

Access to flexibility also seems partly dependent on position and generation, the survey noted. Managers tend to be more tied to an office than individual contributors, while baby boomers tend to have more flexibility in where and when to work compared to Generation Z.

Notably, as companies continue to adapt to hybrid arrangements, managers think they’re better at their jobs than they actually are, according to a Checkr.com report. Managers may not be as effective at relating to their direct reports as they think, and they may be lacking in valuable leadership skills — which could directly impact retention and company culture.

For example, when managers don’t receive training, their female direct reports who work remotely may be overlooked, according to a Perceptyx report. In a hybrid work environment, managers may face challenges in intentionally recognizing their remote workers, and they may need additional training to develop a management strategy that incorporates in-person, hybrid and fully remote positions.

Among HR pros in particular, conducting remote HR functions can pose challenges for recruiting, hiring and onboarding, according to a report from MindEdge Learning and the HR Certification Institute. Turnover rates and employee burnout have also increased, they said.