- Insider reached out to major companies to learn where people are now working.
- Based on five companies' responses, hybrid work is thriving right now.
- Microsoft said its policy allows employees a flexible approach that works best for them.
Fully remote work may be losing support from employers, but being in the office all the time doesn't seem to be thriving at a few well-known companies, either.
There's a growing consensus that the best option might be in the middle: Five major companies explained to Insider that they all have settled on some form of hybrid work, typically where employees spend part of their time working remotely and part in the office.
A majority of US workers in jobs that can be done remotely wants some type of hybrid-work arrangement instead of being solely remote, according to Gallup. Some research also highlights the differences in productivity and satisfaction between remote and in-person models.
Here's what IBM, Google, and other big companies told Insider about their policies.
Microsoft
Microsoft is focusing on hybrid work right now — a policy "that empowers individuals, managers, and teams to design the flexible, hybrid approach that works best for them," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email to Insider. Microsoft workers have to get manager approval if they want to spend more than half their time working remotely, Yahoo Finance's Daniel Howley reported.
"There's no one-size-fits-all solution given the variety of roles, work requirements, and business needs we have at Microsoft, but our hybrid model provides employees with that crucial balance between remote flexibility and in-person connection," the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson noted that the company believes both hybrid work and flexibility aren't going anywhere.
"Time and time again, our external data has shown us that people want the best of both worlds: flexible work and connection," the spokesperson said in a statement. "Our first annual Work Trend Index Report, an external survey of thousands of workers worldwide, uncovered what we call the hybrid paradox: Over 70% of workers told us they wanted flexible work to stay, while over 65% said were craving more in-person time with their teams. We've seen this trend persist in both our external research and in our internal employee surveys at Microsoft."
Google has had a hybrid-work policy for over a year, said Ryan Lamont, a Google spokesperson. The policy has become more integrated in the past few months.
"Our hybrid approach is designed to incorporate the best of being together in person with the benefits of working from home for part of the week," Lamont told Insider in a statement. "Now that we're more than a year into this way of working, we're formally integrating this approach into all of our workplace policies."
The Wall Street Journal reported in June that office attendance for Google workers may be considered in reviews and that people who are often absent from the office will get reminders. Lamont told Insider that office-badge data won't be shared with managers for measuring employee performance but is being used to gauge things like employees being absent from the office for multiple weeks.
"We've heard from Googlers that those who spend at least three days a week in the office feel more connected to other Googlers, and that this effect is magnified when teammates work from the same location," Fiona Cicconi, Google's chief people officer, wrote in a company email per previous reporting.
The Alphabet Workers Union posted on X, formerly Twitter, in June saying that "Google announced the company would begin the enforcement of their RTO policy." Alphabet is the parent company of Google.
"Many teams are distributed, and for some of us there may not be anyone to collaborate with in our physical office locations," Chris Schmidt, a software engineer and Alphabet Workers Union-CWA member, said in the statement that was part of the post on X. "Currently, New York City workers do not even have enough desks and conference rooms for workers to use comfortably."
"A one size fits all policy does not address these circumstances," Schmidt continued. "We deserve a voice in shaping the policies that impact our lives to establish clear, transparent and fair working conditions for all of us."
IBM
"At IBM, most of our employees are co-located near an IBM office or client, and routinely collaborate and co-create in face-to-face environments," Nickle LaMoreaux, the senior vice president and chief human resources officer at IBM, previously said in a statement to Insider.
IBM has had a "phased approach in returning IBM employees," according to IBM's newsroom. While almost all of IBM was working remotely in March 2020, managers are now leading the workplace decisions for their workers.
"IBM's approach before the pandemic and currently is focused on intentional flexibility with collaboration decided by team- and job-based norms," a spokesperson for IBM said in a statement to Insider. "This allows teams to decide flexible hours that are best for people to work, when they need to come together in face-to-face environments and what they are working on. Managers design what works for their teams so that their time at the office is used to collaborate and co-create. This flexibility helps serve both the individual and how work gets done as a team."
EY
Outside of the tech sector, companies are also prioritizing hybrid work. That includes consulting firm EY.
Frank Giampietro, the Americas chief well-being officer for EY, told Insider that EY US "had worked with a design council of about a hundred people across parts of our business to sort of look at the work that they did and then to really try to map out what those interactions would look like for different types of work that we do."
Based on that, EY believed people in most positions would spend 40% to 60% working in person with others. That in-person time, Giampietro said, is supposed to be "for what we call moments that matter — relationships and connectedness, on-the-job learning, coaching, feedback, and then really kind of ideation and complex collaboration."
Still, Giampietro noted the challenge of hybrid work for meeting with clients, as some of "those clients may not be in as frequently or may not want us in as frequently."
Giampietro said that the company's thinking was initially hypothesis-driven; now, based on internal data EY has gathered and other research, "we believe hybrid is the right approach."
"When people are working together two to three days a week in person, they're having higher flexibility and higher well-being scores than those people who are predominantly working on site every day," Giampietro said.
McKinsey & Company
Katy George, a senior partner and the chief people officer at McKinsey & Company, told Insider that "for the most part," the consulting company tries "to leave it to our individual teams to decide what works best for them" and their clients.
"We really urge people to take full advantage of the benefits that are very clear of colocating as well as the benefits of having the flexibility of virtual work," George said. "So we really are embracing a hybrid mindset."
George noted that McKinsey's analytics team found that there's a "sweet spot of being close to 50% colocated" which, for McKinsey staff, means located at one of their offices or with a client.
"When you get to that 50% colocation, we see client feedback and satisfaction going up," George added. "We see the teams having more fun and feeling more connected. We also see retention rates going up, and we see markers that people are getting better apprenticeships and getting more opportunities to learn and grow."
But, George said, after the 50% colocation mark, "we don't see a linear continued improvement on those outcomes by being in person more and more and more." Given that, George said workers are encouraged to "really take advantage of virtual work" when they have projects that don't need to be done with others.
Did you return to the office a few days a week or every day after working from home during the pandemic? Are you a hybrid worker? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected] to share your story and how you feel about your company's current remote, hybrid, or in-person work policy.