New study shows hybrid work is here to stay—whether bosses like it or not

Lately, the conversation about office policy has been dominated by reports of return-to-office mandates, with many employers aiming to get all of their workers back in person by the end of the year. But a new study shows that, despite the best efforts of many RTO proponents, hybrid schedules represent a lasting shift in the way we work—and employees like it that way.

The study is the ninth annual “State of Hybrid Work” report from Owl Labs, a company that offers remote work tech like videoconferencing. It found that, across industries, hybrid work isn’t just “a trend.” Rather, it’s now become a priority that workers are “often willing to trade compensation or quietly sacrifice productivity” to protect.

Here are three main takeaways from the data.

When flexible work gets taken away, employees start looking for a way out

A Resume Builder survey released in January found that 9 in 10 companies plan to require workers back in the office by the end of the year, with 30% already enforcing full five-day, in-office schedules. In the past several months, high-profile companies such as JPMorgan, TikTok, and Ford have implemented stricter RTO policies.

Based on Owl Labs’ report, chances are pretty high that, if and when such policies come to fruition, employees will start looking a lot more closely at their LinkedIn “Jobs” pages. Per the survey, 40% of employees reported that, if hybrid work were taken away, they would start job hunting. Another 22% said they would expect a raise for the lost flexibility, while 5% said they’d quit on the spot.

Some companies have already seen the impact of this trend: After Amazon implemented its RTO strategy late last year, more than half of its office workers started looking for new jobs. 

Hybrid workers have a clear preference for how many days to spend in the office

Any company still working out its hybrid schedule has encountered one key question: How many days should we ask employees to come to work?

The answer, according to Owl Labs, is fairly clear: Workers want to spend three days in the office, and two at home. Of the total respondents, 32% chose the three-day-a-week option, 24% voted for two, and only 14% voted for four. 

“Quiet quitting” is real; “quiet vacationing” is not quite as common

Buzzwords like “job hugging,” “job hopping,” and “clock blocking” have become popular ways to describe workplace trends, but it can sometimes be tricky to parse which are real practices and which are just passing fads. Owl Labs looked into some of the most popular terms to see which have been proven out, especially among hybrid workers.

One trend that appears to be here to stay is “polyworking,” or juggling multiple jobs at once. Owl Labs found that 31% of hybrid workers have at least one additional job, compared with 27% of in-office workers. “Coffee badging,” or swiping one’s ID badge and showing up in person just long enough to be seen by colleagues, is also common: 43% of hybrid employees said they show up to work just to get a bit of face time. 

Some much-hyped trends are less common in actuality. Only 17% of workers said they had tried (and would try again) “quiet vacationing,” the art of taking time off without actually using vacation days. Meanwhile, 32% of employees said they had engaged in “quiet quitting”—which refers to performing only the bare minimum requirements of a job in order to avoid getting fired.

One rising trend that may become more popular, Owl Labs notes, is “unbossing”—which occurs “when workers intentionally dodge management positions to focus on individual career progression versus managing others.”

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