The number of large companies requiring staff in the office on set days is expected to rise by about half next year, according to research commissioned for law firm William Fry.
Currently, about 34 per cent of firms with more than 50 employees have specified days for remote working, but a survey of 404 businesses carried out by Ipsos B&A suggests the figure will rise to 50 per cent over the course of 2027, with employers citing productivity as the biggest factor driving their hybrid policies.
Few of the respondents anticipated the issuing of blanket return to the office mandates, but 5 per cent of larger firms said they do expect their staff to be fully back in the office within 12 months, with a further 4 per cent suggesting it will happen within two years.
The survey results highlight the significant differences between employers of different sizes, with just 30 per cent of SMEs found to be currently operating a hybrid model.
Among all of the firms that do, two or three days onsite emerged as the most common arrangements, with 29 and 33 per cent respectively.
In addition to productivity, organisations expressed concerns about employee accountability, collaboration, onboarding and wellbeing. Among larger firms, 40 per cent cited recruitment and retention as a major consideration.
“Hybrid working is fairly embedded in Irish workplaces,” said Nuala Clayton, William Fry partner and head of employment, pensions and incentives, “but there is a clear trend that some of the flexibility that has been in place for a few years now is moving towards something more structured”.
“I don’t think employers are pulling back on flexibility entirely but they are definitely assessing it,” she said.
“In the early post-pandemic period, the focus was on accommodating employees and perhaps embedding in the preferences that had developed during that time when working from home was so common.
“What we see from the statistics in this survey is that employers are probably more focussed on the trade-offs, with productivity (37 per cent) the single biggest factor that is driving hybrid policy compared to 22 per cent overall for recruitment and retention (the figure is almost twice that, 40 per cent, for larger employers).
“So I think there has definitely been a shift in what many employers are looking at and I suppose that’s a natural development over time with any workplace practice.”
Clayton said the narrative around US-owned employers in Ireland blindly following the decisions relating to hybrid working taken by their head offices can be overstated but “there’s no question that decisions taken in New York or Silicon Valley or elsewhere can have a ripple effect and we can see that the report shows that ripple effect starting to take hold”.