With the high-profile announcements from major brands and presidential orders surrounding the return to full-time in-person working, there is wind in the air that 2025 will be a watershed year for return to office (RTO) mandates. Of course, this is of the utmost importance to providers of business communications and network services, as it impacts how and where workers are connected and protected. So where exactly do things stand with the American workforce, beyond the politics of federal workforce RTO executive orders and the calls from major corporations such as Amazon, Dell Technologies and Starbucks to come back to the office? As usual, the expectations and hype outpace the rate of change. Currently, about three in 10 U.S. companies no longer embrace remote work and expect workers to be in-office full-time. That 30 percent is pretty consistent throughout all of 2024, and it’s actually down from most of 2023, when as many as 49 percent of firms cited themselves as full-time in- office, showed data from the Flex Index, which takes quarterly looks at the state of flexible working. By year end 2025, that 30 percent isn’t likely to change all that much, according to surveys of U.S. companies by ResumeTemplate. Meanwhile, only about 5 percent to 6 percent of respondents are fully remote. The remainder of U.S. firms, or about 65 percent, operate under a “hybrid” model, whereby workers split their days between in-office and remote working, making it far and away the most prevalent work arrangement. It likely will remain the overwhelmingly most popular form of working in the near and far term, suggests findings from both ResumeTemplate and the Flex Index. Within the hybrid work category, the vast majority of companies operate within a “structured hybrid” framework, meaning there is a set expectation as far as how many days or which days an employee goes into the office, versus the employee choosing when to come in. “Structured hybrid is becoming the increasingly dominant work model in the United States,” said Flex Index analysts. Compared to the quarter of organizations that are either fully remote or allow employees to choose, 43 percent of total firms work under a structured hybrid arrangement. That’s up from 20 percent of respondents who did the same in the first quarter of 2023 and the 38 percent in the third quarter of 2024, showed Flex Index data. The vast majority of those organizations (or about eight in 10 of structured hybrid operators) established a minimum number of days per week that employee must work in-person, versus the small amounts that either established specific days or a minimum amount of hours per week. The average amount of days hybrid workers are expected in office is 2.78 days per week, as of the end of 2024. This represents a steady shift upward in required office times for U.S. companies, up from 2.49 days per week in the second quarter of 2024. The change is predominantly driven by two movements in policy, said Flex Index analysts. First, the percentage of firms requiring 0 days per week in-office decreased from 32 percent to 25 percent in 2024, while the percentage of firms requiring three days per week in office increased from 19 percent to 28 percent during 2024. “These are relatively small changes but combined are leading to an increase in the average expectation of time spent in office across the United States,” explained the Flex Index report. Looking specifically at companies that establish a minimum number of days per week of in-office work, about two-thirds require three days per week in-office, while just less than a quarter require two days, while 7 percent and 4 percent require 4 days and 1 day, respectively. Remote Realities By Martin Vilaboy RTO mandates and the state of flexible working BUYERS SIDE 22 CHANNELVISION | JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2025
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