The old way of work wasn't the best, and you don't have to rewatch the Office for the 3rd since May to remember that. From time spent commuting, office environments biasing toward extroverted people, to abysmal floorplans with most people seated a mere 2 feet away, social distancing is looking luxurious.

If you're an employee working from home, I probably don't have to remind you. Employee experience insight companies Qualtrics and Robert Half report that workers don't want to leave remote work. Companies know this and reacting in expectedly appropriate and inappropriate ways:

• Starting in the summer of 2021, Spotify will introduce a "work from anywhere" model, allowing their employees to freely choose between working from home, an office, or a mix of the two.
• Google is reopening offices and expecting workers to return on September 1st, requiring their employees to formally apply to work from home. Odd when you consider that Google's G Suite has been a major player in remote working tools.
• Microsoft is said to fully reopen headquarters on July 6th, and they are taking a hybrid approach between working from home and in-location. It will be a great credibility booster for their enterprise applications Teams, Office 365, and cloud services if they land this transition.

Qualtrics rolled out data on a 4,000 subject study across the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. These respondents were employed throughout the pandemic. The respondents were employed throughout the pandemic. Thirty-five percent of respondents worked entirely remotely during the pandemic, and 46% worked at least some of the time remotely.

• Managers said 55% of their direct reports had been more productive working remotely. And 29% said those direct reports were as effective as they were in the office.
• 51% of employees believe they were more productive.
• Employees at companies who have been proactive about announcing post-pandemic plans are 88% more likely to say their overall well-being has improved.
• Flexible schedules and a lack of commuting time were the most significant productivity boosters, but control over the workspace, focus, and more privacy was also big.

• Your workforce has moved away. For employees that moved away during the pandemic, 47% of them don't plan on coming back.
• Hybrid wins out. Only 27% of workers want to go back to the office full time, but only 7% wish to work from home full time. Overall, 73% of workers want to work remotely one or two days a week.
• 70% of managers want a hybrid work arrangement compared to 59% of individual contributors.
• 46% want work layouts to change to include quiet and private workspaces, more flexible meeting areas, and more space between desks.

• Business travelers want to travel. 61% of workers want to return to their previous travel time or more, and 18% want to travel less. Good luck getting your CFO to agree to those expenses when sales productivity improved in many cases without it.
• A Robert Half study found that 49% of workers wanted a hybrid work arrangement. Many workers said they were concerned about relationships with coworkers and career advancement if they were utterly remote. According to Robert Half, one in three workers would look for a new job if required to be in the office full time.

With more than half of Americans having received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 1 in 4 Americans fully vaccinated, we see an increasing number of companies trying to move back to a pre-pandemic view of work while others are evolving the views to fit the world today. It will be exciting to see which companies rise above the challenges and those who turned over and out.