About half of all multinational companies said they planned to reduce office space over the next three years, according to a survey by real estate companies Frank Knight and Cresa.

The largest number of global businesses (those with 50,000 employees or more) aimed to cut space by 10 to 20 per cent. By contrast, those with under 10,000 employees mostly (55 per cent) said they intended to increase global office space.

Hybrid

But sentiment over hybrid working is mixed. More than half respondents (56 per cent) said they had decided to keep a hybrid policy – allowing workers more flexibility to mix working from the office with being at home or in another location. About 12 per cent said they intended to go mostly or entirely remote.

But 31 per cent of respondents said they were promoting an office-first or office-only approach. 

There are not many objective studies on the longer-term impact of hybrid working, but the evidence shows mixed results. One study showed that among graduate engineers and finance professionals, employees valued the hybrid model and, among the companies involved in the research, 33% reported increased job satisfaction. But managers did not value it compared with non-managerial staff – and saw increased rates of attrition and lower productivity at that level.   

Metrics

Most companies do not know how to measure the effectiveness of their hybrid working mandates.

“Several hard-to-measure metrics are similarly important for an organization’s culture and talent management: morale, engagement, well-being, happiness, burnout, intent to leave, relationships, and quiet quitting,” said an article in Fortune magazine.

Demand for employee monitoring software has boomed since the pandemic. Concerns over productivity of remote workers has driven such initiatives in the hope that monitoring software would ensure their staff worked effectively from home. Such software can record most computer activity and may include processes that allow covert webcam access and random screenshot monitoring. But the software also risks breaching privacy laws when deployed outside of the workplace.