A Stanford professor of economics has taken to social media to share Census, SWAA, and Kastle data, which shows that the return-to-office movement appears to have stalled.
Posting on X (formerly Twitter), Nick Bloom, Stanford Professor and Co-Founder of WFH Research and WFH Map, asserted: “Return to the office is dead.”
WFH levels have become “flat as a pancake”. The latest Census, SWAA and Kastle data all show the same thing. Levels of WFH were falling throughout 2020 to 2022, and office occupancy was rising. That trend ended in 2023, with both now pancake flat. Return to the Office is dead. pic.twitter.com/8PxoY05Ept
— Nick Bloom (@I_Am_NickBloom) November 28, 2023
In a recent UC Today 2024 predictions series, David Danto, Director of Emerging Technologies at IMCCA, supported Bloom’s view that the great migration back to the office has hit a wall.
Danto believes that “people will begin to realize that nobody is returning to anything anymore that they have not already returned to despite whatever incentives or threats or anything else that happens.
Traditional office buildings are at about 60 to 65 percent of their past capacity and that is probably about the best they are ever going to achieve.
“Equilibrium” was Danto’s headline prediction for 2024, as a new balance between home and office working levels will also lead to the repurposing of office buildings into residential and retail spaces, as well as city, town, and countryside populations adjusting to reflect the stabilization of remote working.
Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, also made a “positive move forward in hybrid work” his key prediction for 2024, which is a 180-degree turn for Kerravala as last he predicted, rightly in his view, that hybrid work would be a “disaster”.
Kerravala believes that the vendor community has been helping to support hybrid work by effectively showcasing their products to the public. Cisco, he says, has done a lot of marketing in this area, as has Poly and World Wide Technology.
He believes that businesses seem to have settled on workers coming into the office around two to three days per week.
Furthermore, many companies that introduced office working mandates have now reduced that to one to three days, which workers appear to feel comfortable with.
The more visible and improved hybrid working technology, plus customer willingness and lots of lessons learned, “will come together and finally start to move us forward in hybrid work,” according to Kerravala.
Not everyone will be happy about this. A CEO survey from KPMG recently uncovered that 64 percent of CEOs want to end hybrid working within three years.
Earlier this week, HR experts from Gartner suggested three motivational strategies to help leaders get their employees back to the office, which revolved around purpose, transparency, and inclusion.
