Do you work at your home or a traditional office instead? Your answer to that question might once have been straightforward — but the pandemic’s aftermath has left many people opting for an in-between option known as ‘hybrid working’.
The term ‘hybrid working’ refers to a system where an employee spends just some of their work time in a conventional workplace, with the rest spent at home. It’s an arrangement that, in popularity, has started eclipsing other remote working methods.
As revealed in GlobalData research cited by Tech Digest, job postings with ‘hybrid working’ as a keyword were 31% higher in 2022’s first quarter compared to 2021’s fourth quarter. Meanwhile, ‘work from home and ‘remote working’ listings declined in number.
A Closer Look at the Rise of Hybrid Working
GlobalData’s analysis here took in job postings for more than 4000 companies. Those postings mentioning ‘remote’ jobs were found to have fallen by 11%, while the drop was 13% in the case of ‘work from home positions.
This situation has led Sherla Sriprada, Business Fundamentals Analyst at GlobalData, to comment: “Hybrid work is fast becoming the way to go for many companies after the recent pandemic that hit the world. Many companies have now prioritized flexible work arrangements in order to increase their chance of recruiting and retaining employees.”
Gary Barton, a Technology Analyst at GlobalData, referred to research the analytics firm had made in December 2021, explaining that “only 30% of employees have the intention of returning to their in-office, full-time employment, compared to about 48% of employees that would prefer a hybrid working model and about 22% that would love to just work from home.”
Is It Workers Who Currently Hold the Cards?
Barton added: “As job vacancies continue to increase – even more than employees available for them, and the ‘war for talent’ increases, businesses may need to make a shift away from mandating how and where employees can work from.”
His thoughts appear to be backed up by Gallup research into “remote-capable employees”; in other words, workers whose jobs can be done remotely from home at least part of the time.
Of the remote-capable employees participating in the research, roughly 53% said that they anticipated working predominantly to a hybrid schedule going forward, while a comparatively small 24% thought that they were set to work fully remotely.
A preference for at least some degree of remote-work flexibility was expressed by 90% of the remote-capable employees, while 60% specifically said that they most favored hybrid work.
When Gallup directly asked workers whether they would seek a new job if their employer took remote-work options entirely off the table, 54% of employees working exclusively from home and 38% of hybrid workers claimed that they would likely look for another job.
How Can Employers Continuing Offering Remote-Work Flexibility?
Many companies could take up office spaces capable of facilitating hybrid work. These companies could even further enhance their appeal to job seekers by basing themselves in a major cosmopolitan city.
This would be an option with flexible workspaces in London from BE Offices, which also operates corporate hubs for employers to rent in other major UK cities. As hybrid working ultimately seems to be here to stay, employers should act accordingly.