Is hybrid work the worst of both worlds?

Evidence is piling up that it might be

After several false starts, office workers are returning to their desks—for good this time,
employers hope. As covid-19 restrictions are scaled back, people must again get used to
crowds. Financial giants such Wells Fargo have joined Wall Street titans such as JPMorgan
Chase and Morgan Stanley in urging people back to the office. The great return is afoot in
big tech, too. Meta and Microsoft are asking employees to return by late March. Most big
Silicon Valley campuses will be fuller from April. Many bosses share the sentiment of James
Gorman, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive: if you can eat out, you can come to the office.

For purveyors of remote-working tech, the gradual unwinding of the grand work-from-home
experiment is already proving rough. Slack, a corporate-chat app owned by Salesforce, a
software giant, projects slowing sales growth to 20% in the next quarter, year on year, down
from 50% at the height of the pandemic. In February Zoom reported that growth had slowed
globally, with revenues in Europe, the Middle East and Africa down by 9%, compared with a
year earlier, and the number of its video-conferencing clients had declined relative to the
previous quarter. Its market value has sunk as a result (see chart).

The return to the office will be no picnic for employers, either. Most are scrambling to figure
out what the future of work will look like. For many, the most pressing question is: how
hybrid will that future be? In the short run, almost certainly pretty hybrid. Apple is bringing
staff back to the office one day a week to start. By May 23rd, the iPhone-maker will require
them to come in three days a week. Citigroup, hsbc and Standard Chartered let their bankers
work from home on some days.

That seems only natural. Combining office and home toil appeared to do wonders for work-
life balance. And on the face of it, the past two years have shown that people can work well
from anywhere, says Despina Katsikakis of Cushman & Wakefield, a property consultancy.
Productivity, collaboration and focus seem to have held up.

The problem, says Ms Katsikakis, is that “all of the other elements are suffering.” In one
global survey of more than 600 company leaders and human-resources professionals, for
example, more than 80% responded that hybrid set-ups were emotionally exhausting for
employees. Many ringing endorsements of it made by bosses and workers in mid-2021
turned into deep reservations just a few months later. As more people return to the office,
concerns about hybridisation are likely to become ever more acute. Rather than being the
best of both worlds, is hybrid work really a rotten compromise?

The hybrid workplace is failing to live up to expectations in a number of ways. For one
thing, it is no substitute for the buzz and the chatter of the pre-pandemic office. Many people
hanker after the socialising, camaraderie and shared experience, even if getting used to it
again may take time. Even small amounts of remote work can have a big impact on the
frequency of face-to-face interactions in the office. By one estimate, spending an average of
three days each week in the office can limit encounters between any two workers by 64%
compared with pre-pandemic norms. The gap widens to 84% in potential interactions for
those in the office two days a week.