The baffling WFH puzzle

Open the Editor’s Marking Free

Rulla Khalaf, the FT editor, chooses its preferred stories in this week’s news.

Something meaning about the great return of the office.

Over the past few years, all types of employers tighten their rules for working from home.

They decided it’s time for their staff for many lyrics The star of the British businessman-TV channel, Lord Alan sugar, “return them to the office.”

Not all companies joined Goldman Sachs and Tesla and demanded a full-time return. But Many followed IBM, Deutsche Bank and even enlargementThe child of a remote work revolution and brought more harsh rules of the household.

But here’s something weird. So far, statistics suggest that working from home levels has remained noticeably stable. This is a mess, even for experts who worked long work, before the epidemic became the main thing in practice. “I’m really wondering,” said the economist of Stanford University, Professor Nick Bloom, told me this week.

His researchThe share of thousands of American employees includes the share of their work from home to 61% to 30% to 2022 in 2020.

But those levels were remained significantly in 2023, never descending from 26 percent. You can see a similar example at office visit levels.

Thus, what explains the gap between these persistent persistence of remote control and the whole news about returning to the office?

It could be a question of perception. Real rules of news mean that a company that does something inefficient or disruptive, as cutting distant work days, tend to be more optimistic than usual as usual.

Perhaps the idea of ​​remote remote work has always been out of the less interesting reality of many employers who calmly connected the existing hybrid working arrangements.

There are reasons to think so.

Some The biggest fans Working from home is smaller, smaller, less well-known companies, as Bloom points to the fastest growing firms. Their expansion can make more noticeable cuts in a larger business business business.

Also a longer hybrid working lasts, the more obvious is its advantages of some firms.

I extend my condolences to distant working critics who are worried that diverged, nuclear home workers can be less effective, less responsible and more disabled than their office partners. Some office work is best performed personally, especially if it requires real-time inspections and quick decisions. But I’m not surprised by a research that shows more commonly spread hybrid pattern for three days a week, and two at home can make both employees and financial directors.

When Trip.com, the Great Chinese Travel Company has made a six-month trial to compare such employees with full-time colleagues, it has found an increase in hybrid labor satisfaction, the third. There was no sign of a decline in presentation.

The managers were more positive after the hybrid trial than before that when the experience ended, the company decided to spread the hybrid policy to all employees.

Their logic was clear, according to a paper Bloom and partners have been published last year on the trial. “Every issue has cost about $ 20,000 in collection and training, so one-third of the company will save millions of dollars for the company.”

As Trip.com announced his decision, other Chinese technology companies have adopted similar hybrid policies.

For all this, 2025 may be the year when the work received from home has finally turned. Companies such as ContricolativeTo be in style Unpleasant aeration of Starbucks: Last year the titles formed for more harsh rules that did not start until January. More strict policy in other businesses such as WppThe advertising group will not start until April. Donald Trump re-election who day order Federal staff returns to the office all time on the first day of his presidency, more leaders can act. Perhaps we are approaching the end of long tranquility before the office storm is returned.

Even if it happens, the idea that work patterns will ever return what they have happened before the epidemic is very difficult at this time.