Experts Unsure About Return To Office Plans For Employers And Workers

While the world wished to return to a pre-pandemic normal with workers returning to offices, that may not be realistic as people have firmly adjusted to the COVID-19 pandemic definition of normal.

Work from home options have proven to have a firm grip on people, with the added flexibility and less formal structure especially helpful to those who have families. Now, companies have seemingly once again abandoned the idea of their employees going back into the office again following the surge of Omicron cases.

While Omicron’s surge is expected to be shorter compared to other COVID-19 variants, there is still some time left to deal with the uptick in cases. The question remains though whether a return to office mandate is appropriate or practical given the amount of change people are already used to, as well as the potential for other variants to emerge.

“The return-to-office date has died . . . Endless waves of Covid have led most CEOs to give up, and instead set up contingent policies: if, when and how to return to the office,” Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University, told BBC.

Further, many employees have considered quitting if asked to go back to work, according to a Bloomberg article. Already, according to data from Zip Recruiter, jobs specified as remote got 300% more applicants according to NBC. The number of professional jobs that became remote during the pandemic doubled to nearly 20%, according to an analysis from the online jobs search service, Ladders.

“The accelerating change to permanent remote now means that over 20 million professional jobs will not be going back to the office after COVID,” said Marc Cenedella, CEO of Ladders, about the company’s analysis.

Employers would give estimates about when employees would have to return to the office — either with a hybrid or full-time model — and those dates kept getting pushed back as these waves of COVID-19 kept moving throughout the world, and then came the variants: Delta and Omicron. As far as the pandemic goes, no one knows what the future holds.

Sure, there are industries that cannot do a remote work model long term and whose day-to-day business operations require at least some people to be in the office or on-site, but for many industries work from home is a feasible option.

"It’s the largest change in American working and living arrangements since World War II,” Cenedella, told NBC in a statement.

While some employers are incentivizing employees to come back to work with either more benefits or at-work amenities like child care or food, it seems likely that remote work options will prevail for many professional employees.