How the return-to-office trend is playing out globally

Many firms expect staff to be in the office at least 3 days a week, but workers want some flexibility

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Many firms expect staff to be in the office at least 3 days a week, but workers want some flexibility.

NEW YORK - During the pandemic lockdowns that began in 2020, millions of office workers suddenly abandoned their workplaces and started doing their jobs from home, in what McKinsey & Co researcher Ryan Luby called "a social experiment at scale". The debate over what it proved rages on.

Does giving people agency over where they work, and on which days, reduce productivity? Erode company culture? The research is not conclusive. Still, managers and workers tend to have strong feelings based on their own experiences, leading to a broad range of office policies and reactions to them, now that the choice is back with employers.

With lockdowns over, some companies have stuck with fully remote workplaces. Others have recalled office personnel to the workplace five days a week, with limited room for exceptions or patience for complaints. Those in the middle have settled into hybrid arrangements.

WHAT ARE THE TRENDS?

Today, 85 per cent of companies globally expect office workers to be present in the workplace at least three days a week, according to commercial real estate giant JLL, and 97 per cent are tracking attendance through badge swipes.

The so-called return-to-office (RTO) trend has not played out evenly across continents.

In the US, the average percentage of workdays in which people work from home (WFH) has found a new normal slightly north of 20 per cent, according to data from survey company WFH Research. That was after soaring to 61 per cent in 2020 from just 7 per cent in 2019, as measured by a survey with a similar question by the Bureau of Labour Statistics.