Hybrid workplaces are the future of work

The year-long experiment in remote working is wrapping up as COVID-19 vaccines roll out, and the debate around where people work is heating up. On one extreme you have GitLab, a company that has been fully remote since before the pandemic. And on the other side you have Goldman Sachs, whose CEO has called remote work an “aberration” and will return the entire workforce to working in-person full time as soon as possible. Yet as with most things in life, the best answer lies somewhere in the middle.

We believe that hybrid workplaces, those where most employees work partially in the office and partially remotely, are the future of work. And this is backed up by data. A survey of 9,000 knowledge workers revealed that 72% percent of employees want to work in a hybrid workplace, with only 16% preferring to be fully remote and 12% wanting to work from an office full time.

Yet this doesn’t mean that the workplace itself isn’t going to change. A year of working remote changed how we work, and it changed employees’ expectations around the workplace as well as highlighted some of the strengths and weaknesses of existing offices.

 

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