In March 2020, tens of millions of Americans shifted to working from home to avoid exposure to Covid-19.
In April 2020, 70% of Americans “always or sometimes” worked remotely, according to Gallup. Today, that share is closer to 56%, even though 61% say they prefer working from home.
Now, companies all around the world are planning to bring more workers back to the office. One survey of 350 business leaders by staffing firm LaSalle Network found that 70% plan to have employees back in the office in some capacity by the fall of this year.
Over time, many workers adjusted to working from home during a global pandemic. And while vaccinations are proving to be effective, many will now need to learn how to work from the office during a global pandemic.
CNBC Make It spoke with experts about what the return to work will look like.
Hybrid work
High-profile companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google say they will be using a hybrid work model, where workers spend time working both from the office and from home, going forward. And business leaders don’t seem to think that shift is temporary. In the LaSalle survey, 77% of respondents said they believe their workforce will use a hybrid model through next year.
Brian Welle, the VP of people analytics at Google was one of the leaders helping make this call. He says that while internal polling suggests that productivity did dip at the very beginning of the pandemic, Googlers’ productivity rebounded to pre-pandemic levels fairly quickly. Now, Google’s employees appear to be split about where they do their best work.
“When it came to work productivity, ‘Where can I do my best thinking? Where can I do my best coding? Where can I do my best work?’ You’ve got some people who say from home, some people who say from the office and almost an equal percentage who say it doesn’t matter,” says Welle. “Wouldn’t it nice and simple down the road that you categorize people into one or the other? And it’s not that way.”
In part because of this split, Google chose to embrace a hybrid option.
“Where we ended up as a company is offering as much flexibility as we could to enable Google employees to optimize for themselves, while also giving teams what they needed,” he says. “What it looks like is a default option, that we think most employees are going to take advantage of, which is coming into the office three days a week, and working from another location two days a week.”
Hybrid work, he says, “Lets you do all the things we came to love about working from home, while also getting that moment of connection and the ability to do innovative work in person in the office.”
