Future of Work Study: Hybrid Home/Office the Norm in 2024

Hybrid work from home and office will be the default arrangement in 2024, according to more than eight in ten senior executives surveyed by AT&T and the Dubber Corp. The Future of Work study is based on the views of 303 U.S.-based respondents,

The study validated the idea that the way work gets done is in transition. Researchers found that executives believe 56% of work will be done offsite.

At the same time, the survey suggested a lack of readiness: Seventy-two percent of businesses don’t have a detailed hybrid working strategy and 76% don’t have the right key performance indicators to support this type of work.  There is tension as well: Eighty-six percent of respondents believe their employees want a hybrid model – while 64% believe their organizations prefer an on-premises approach.

One thing is unanimous: 100% — a figure rarely seen in survey results — believe that a hybrid model will be useful in attracting young talent.

Future of Work-Study

The report found that the three barriers to the hybrid model are lack of workplace innovation, insufficient oversight, and cultural shifts. Participants believe that these challenges can be overcome and that artificial intelligence can be a big factor in doing so.

Other challenges include maintaining employee oversight, losing institutional/”tribal” knowledge, and sustaining company culture. However, 79% of firms said that remote employees have been productive.

Other findings from the survey:

• Ninety-one percent believe a hybrid work model will improve workforce diversity.
• Fifty-eight percent believe they don’t have the culture to sustain a hybrid work model.

“There’s been a non-reversible shift in the way business is done thanks to the constraints of COVID-19,” Alicia Dietsch, the Senior Vice President of AT&T Business Marketing, said in a press release. “It’s clear that a successful talent program now requires a hybrid work policy, but that policy needs to be supported by a strategic tech-first cultural reset, to ensure business growth and competition. Firms need to ask themselves if they have the in-house expertise to achieve this, or whether it’s now time to go beyond a partner in remote infrastructure rollout to a partner in tech-first remote business strategy.”