THE MESSY FUTURE OF WORK

REMOTE WORK is clearly here to stay but there are still a lot of wrinkles to iron out

- DAVID H. FREEDMAN

A LOT OF HEADLINES HAVE BEEN screaming lately that America's honeymoon with remote work is over. "Bosses mean it this time: Return to the office or get a new job!" says The Washington Post. "Even Zoom Is Making People Return to the Office," says The New York Times.

These articles cite some heavy-hitting organizations that are evidently ordering employees back to work, including Google, Meta, Amazon, the federal government and, yes, even video-conferencing giant Zoom. "The pandemic is over. Excuses for allowing offices to sit empty should end, too," wrote Michael Bloomberg, former New York City mayor and co-founder of the news publisher Bloomberg, in The Washington Post.

These pronouncements miss the mark. The evidence suggests that the full-time office workweek is unlikely to return to most organizations any time in the foreseeable future. What may have started as a pandemic-era dalliance has become, in only a few short years, deeply embedded in America's workstyle.

But there's a catch. Most companies, and even most employees, aren't crazy about working fulltime from a home office. Instead, companies in the U.S. and elsewhere seem to be settling on a hybrid arrangement, in which employees split their work hours between remote and office-based work. Employees have made up their minds that they want the option of working remotely for part of the week, and companies are adapting to making the hybrid workplace a permanent feature.