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Hybrid employees are getting into the habit of taking two days off per week, but not on the days you might anticipate.
Although many businesses’ flexible work schedules aimed to have employees work from home on Monday and Friday and attend meetings Tuesday through Thursday, it appears that employees are remaining from home more often on Thursday. This is supported by recent data from WFH Research, a group of academics led by Stanford University’s Nicholas Bloom who has gathered information on the behaviours and attitudes of tens of thousands of American workers since the pandemic started.
Over the previous six months, Friday has ranked as the most popular day to work from home, with Thursday coming in second. Wednesday is the most frequent day to be on-site.
The findings demonstrate how employment patterns have changed despite the epidemic being nearly three years old. They also highlight how challenging it is for businesses to enforce strong rules regarding returning to work, particularly given the persistently tight labour market. Other major firms, like Apple Inc., wanted employees in on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and one other day that would be decided by specific teams. Peloton Interactive Inc. is one of the employers that has called workers back on Tuesday through Thursday.
Apple’s first plan called for in-person work on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, a sign of how businesses frequently modify ostensibly RTO plans based on actual office utilisation and employee feedback.
Data on office occupancy collected by security company Kastle Systems Inc. for the month of October in 10 major US cities, for instance, revealed that weekdays were by far the most popular times for people to visit the location. The “most desired days to come into the office” in both North America and Europe, according to a recent survey from Relogix, a company that offers occupancy analytics to businesses, are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Experts are perplexed by the shift in the most popular day for working remotely from Thursday.
Thursday and Friday are currently in the lead, with Monday coming in third, which surprises me, said Bloom. “I had assumed that Monday through Friday were the days when people could work from home, but obviously not. Sincerely, I’m not sure why.”
According to the WFH Research group, which also includes Jose Maria Barrero of Mexico’s ITAM business school, Steven Davis, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Shelby Buckman, a researcher at Stanford, nearly half of employees who have the option to work from home have established some sort of hybrid routine. While little over one in five are entirely remote, just under a third are fully on site. According to Bloom’s research team, Monday and Friday are the next most common day pairing for those who work two days remotely.
