Explainer: Will the trend of work from home stop in 2025, why are companies insisting on employees coming to office to work?

Obnews Explainer Desk: After the arrival of Corona, the trend of work from home became quite popular. But, companies started coming back on track and now started promoting hybrid mode instead of work from home. But by the year 2024, many companies started pressurizing the employees working from home to come to the office. The year 2025 has started and now there have been mixed reactions regarding many companies. So, what should you know about work from home jobs in 2025? You will know about it in today's explainer, so keep reading till the end.

Economists at Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania concluded that hybrid work is here to stay. Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic, most employees around the world were working from home. But this changed from 2022, when remote work saw a decline, paving the way for a hybrid working model. In 2025, many big tech companies like Amazon, AT&T and Wipro are insisting on working from office five days a week.

Has the usefulness of remote work gone?

According to a report by Fortune, after the pandemic ends, many executives argue that the usefulness of remote work has ended. The CEO believes that the office footprint is more important to the future of the business than attracting and retaining top talent. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told hundreds of thousands of his employees that they need to come back to the office five days a week. Their employees are not happy, in fact more than seven out of ten say they are looking for other options to work.

According to Fortune, employers say they have spent millions of dollars on high-end offices and so they want them to be used. Others say that companies simply want to lay off employees and that return to office is a way to force employees to leave their jobs. Research shows mandates to work in the office are hurting high performers at companies.

This has been revealed in KPMG's survey in 2023

63% of CEOs surveyed by KPMG in October 2023 predicted a full return to office work by the end of 2026. Economists point out that the hybrid working model is important to attract talent. Work from home models have helped many hybrid-friendly companies perform better, leading to increased productivity and stock.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang saw it coming. The AI ​​company, which has seen its share price rise 171% so far this year. This company completely skipped Return to Office (RTO) mandates, ensuring that the company retains the brightest talents in a competitive market. “Requiring federal workers to come into the office five days a week will result in a wave of voluntary terminations,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who now heads the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the Donald Trump government, wrote in The Wall Street Journal. Which we welcome.

The problem with this method is that the boss has no control at all over which employee chooses to move over due to the RTO requirement. Data from the Flex Index, which analyzed employer-provided data from more than 8,000 businesses in the US and found that through 2024, the number of businesses offering work location flexibility has plateaued at about 70%.

These things you should know about remote work in the year 2025

About 68% of American companies promote work from home in some way or the other. Only one-third of companies require full-time office attendance. About 43% of US firms have structured hybrid models. Small businesses are more likely to offer fully remote work flexibility (70%) than larger established organizations (only 14%).

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40% of working hours per month should be spent in office

It is important to note that when it comes to implementing a structured hybrid remote work model, the majority of companies (79%) prefer to set a minimum number of days per week, with only a small percentage setting a specific number of days each week i.e. Chooses to come to office on Monday and Friday or to come to office during minimum working hours i.e. Monday and Friday. 40% of working hours per month should be spent in the office.

A Gallup survey showed that 6 in 10 employees want hybrid work, while 1 in 3 are in favor of fully remote work. Less than 10% people want to work from office. Nearly 40% of employees say they would look for a new job if they were no longer given the option to work hybrid or fully remote.

Remote work is gaining acceptance in India also. Forbes cited a survey by CXOToday that said around 60-90 million Indians – about 15% of the workforce – will work remotely in 2025. Currently this figure is 12%.