This was supposed to be the year of returning to the office. The same could be said for 2021, and even the second half of 2020. The office seems to have become a place where we’re always “returning” but never quite “arriving.”
Although office occupancy rates have risen meaningfully, they are still nowhere near pre-pandemic norms in most of the country. In most big cities, offices are still empty more than half the time. Even in Austin, Texas — which has the highest occupancy rate among large cities, according to Kastle Systems badge-in data — workplaces are still much emptier than before the pandemic.
So, what have we learned about hybrid work over the past 12 months?
Hybrid work is the norm. The idea of a tug of war between managers and employees over spending time in the office has been a bit exaggerated. Polls have shown consistently that employees do value some degree of face time and want to be in the office roughly two days a week. Managers would prefer three. For those keeping score at home, that’s a difference of … one day.
“Overwhelmingly, managers are pretty much aligned with employees,” Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom says. The exceptions he has found are people who have “30-plus years of work experience, and have been very successful and have done that all in person … but they are real outliers.” Instead, most bosses are gradually becoming comfortable with managing and evaluating employees they don’t see every day — and not with creepy surveillance software, which Bloom dismisses as “awful.”
Hybrid work is the norm. The idea of a tug of war between managers & employees over spending time in the office has been a bit exaggerated: “Overwhelmingly, managers are pretty much aligned with employees,” Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom says https://t.co/1XHLXCawo6
— Jim Russell (@ProducerCities) December 22, 2022