In a recent British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) survey of 583 businesses, 94% of those who took part were SMEs with fewer than 250 employees, found that over 41% of businesses have increased their requirement for their staff to return to the workplace, over the past year. This finding varies across sectors but there is a clear shift towards more firms requiring full on-site working, since hybrid working became the norm during the pandemic.
Looking forward, 48% of those businesses surveyed expect staff to be on site for all working days during the next 12 months. The data shows there are significant differences in business attitudes towards hybrid working, with 62% of manufacturers, 61% of business to consumer (B2C) and 27% of business to business (B2B) service companies expecting all working days to be on-site in the next year. The survey also showed that businesses have mixed views over how productivity is impacted by hybrid working with 41% of all companies stating that it impacts them negatively. 25% of B2B companies however feel there is an increase in productivity when staff are working remotely, compared to just 17% for all businesses.
Jane Gratton, Director of Public Policy at the British Chambers of Commerce explains “We’re seeing a clear shift towards more firms requiring full on-site working, but it’s by no means a uniform picture. The trend is being led by manufacturers and consumer-facing businesses, while around two thirds of B2B service firms continue to operate hybrid models. Hybrid working … does not suit everyone and, for some firms, a full onsite model may be the best solution for the business. With the cost of doing business continuing to escalate, firms are looking to boost productivity. Hybrid working can help firms attract and retain a skilled and engaged workforce. However, some employers are identifying significant benefits of bringing all staff together again onsite. How and where people work is likely to continue to evolve in the years ahead. A flexible working approach makes good business sense but, to drive economic growth, managers also need the flexibility to do what’s right for their business.”
A Return To The Office In 2025?
When compared to past years the numbers of people who are or who are expected to be returning to the office is increasing. In 2023 BCC polling of over 1000 companies found that only 27% of those companies that responded predicted their staff would be fully working on-site over the next five years. The 2025 BCC poll found that the number has increased to 48% of businesses expecting staff to be on-site on all working days during the next 12 months.
The BCC findings are backed up by other sources. Facilitate Magazine reports that the return to the office is rising based on the Virgin Media O2 Business Movers Index (VM O2 BMI) which states that “almost nine in ten UK workers are now required to come into the office more frequently. The direction of travel is clear – CEOs and boards are pushing a ‘back to the office’ policy.” The VM O2 BMI also found that “Office attendance has continued to climb in early 2025, as over half (52%) of British employees are going in more frequently. Mobile data shows the first few months of the year were marked by a 5% increase in commuting trips, and a 1% increase from the same time last year. Wednesday remains the most popular day of the week (77%) to go to the office. 38% of workers now commute five days a week, with a predicted increase of 16% full time office attendance in the summer potentially bringing the total number of UK businesses with five-day mandates to 43%.”
The BCC and VM O2 BMI findings are also echoed by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) “Analysis of what employers return to office plans for 2025” which found that “large employers want employees back in the office more frequently” and of the “large private sector employers that already mandate days, 30% are planning to increase the number of mandated days in the next 12 months, compared to 21% of SMEs and 17% of employers in the public sector. However, just 6% of employers who currently have no mandatory days in the office plan to introduce them in the next 12 months.”
There’s also been an upward trend of company CEOs predicting that staff will be working on-site over the last couple of years. In the 2023 KPMG CEO Outlook survey which polled 1,325 CEO’s of businesses with over $500 million in revenue, 150 of which were UK based, reported that 64% of global CEOs and 63% of UK CEOs were planning a pre-pandemic full time return to office working by 2026. In the 2024 survey of more than 1300 CEOs KPMG found that there was a “hardening [of] their stance on returning to pre-pandemic ways of working, with 83 percent expecting a full return to the office within the next three years [2027] — a notable increase from 64 percent in 2023.”
Is Hybrid Working Still Important In 2025?
According to Prime Appointments hybrid working is still a “major trend” in 2025 and “while office-based work is back on the rise, it’s still far from pre-pandemic levels when only 12% of employees had hybrid setups.”
Data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows that 13% of working adults in the UK were working fully remotely between January and March 2025 and over 28% were hybrid working. The proportion of hybrid workers has been rising gradually since March 2022 and those who only travel to work has declined.
This data is backed up by a Kings College London’s (KCL) “Return-to-office mandates: What is at stake for workers, companies, and gender equality?” report that states “Despite high-profile CEO announcements and media reports suggesting a “great return” to workplaces, researchers found no evidence of a mass move back to offices, with working-from-home rates remaining stable since 2022.” They go onto say that “If anything, there’s been a slow increase in average permitted [Work From Home] WFH days—from less than 1 day per week in 2022 to about 1.3 days in 2024. However, there is also evidence to show that employers are less likely to allow full-remote working, with slight increase in number of 1~2 days of homeworking policies.”
The KCL study found that when asked 42% of staff would go back to a five day return to work mandate which is down from 54% in 2022, the numbers of workers who stated they would look for a new job which allowed hybrid working rose from 40% to 50%. Staff who say they would leave their job straight away if forced to go back to the office 5 days a week rose from 5 to 10% and 64% of women say they would quit straight away or look for another job compared to 51% of men.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) survey carried out between 14 April and 5 May 2025, of 2,050 HR professionals, found that “while media headlines have been dominated by announcements of ‘return to office’ mandates, we find that just over one in 10 say their organisation is looking to either introduce or mandate further returns to the office in the next 12 months. However, half of organisations that offer hybrid working have put in place incentives to encourage employees to be in the workplace more often, and more than half of employees believe there is pressure to spend more time in the physical workspace. Overall, perceptions of organisation productivity and efficiency have remained positive for those experiencing an increase in home/hybrid working.”
The CIPD “Flexible and hybrid working practices in 2025” report states that 74% of businesses have hybrid working in place, which has reduced slightly from 84% reported in the 2023 CIPD survey and 77% in 2022. 42% of businesses have a formal policy and 23% have an approach which is informal and where agreements are made between managers and employees. 9% of companies are “developing their approach and policies through testing and learning.” The report also states that 18% of companies have had an increase in flexible working requests since the introduction of the right to request flexible working from the first day in a job and that “these flexible working requests have tended to be for hybrid working and part-time hours, it is also interesting to see quite a wide variety of requested arrangements, including requests for compressed hours, job-shares and term-time working.”
The CIPD report concludes that “flexible working is pivotal to the attraction and retention of talent. Flexible working remains important to employees and has a positive impact on their quality of life. In fact, around 1.1 million employees say they have left a job in the last year due to a lack of flexible working, and this is particularly the case for younger employees.”
On-site Vs Hybrid Working
It’s clear that hybrid working is still important for many businesses with at least half of UK companies believing hybrid working is still the right choice for their business. As with everything one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to on-site working and hybrid working and it’s for companies to decide which option: having staff in the office, working remotely or a mixture of both is the best decision for their business and workers. So, what’s the right option for your business? Here are some of the many pros and cons of hybrid working to help you decide which type of working would work best for your business.
Pros
There are a number of benefits that come from hybrid working. Some of which are outlined below:
Work-life Balance
Hybrid working can provide a greater degree of flexibility and autonomy allowing staff to choose where they work each day.
Finding the right balance between working from home and working from the office can help employees put together a work routine that supports their work and personal priorities. Reducing or eliminating the commute to the office frees up time and money, both of which can be put towards personal activities providing for a better work-life balance.
Wellbeing
Studies have shown that hybrid working makes employees “happier, healthier and more productive” according to a survey of 1,026 people. The survey states that 75% found they felt less burnout when they worked flexibly. 79% reported feeling less drained, 78% were less stressed and 72% were less anxious “as a result of spending part of the week working from home.” 86% said the savings in commute time improved their work/life balance and helped them feel they could cope better with the challenges of daily life.
Other benefits cited included 68% experienced better sleep quality, 54% had more time for exercise, 58% took the time to make healthier meals and 68% felt the overall health was better. 75% said that “going back to working five days a week from a central office would damage their wellbeing.”
Work Satisfaction
Hybrid working can lead to an increase in job satisfaction by enabling staff to better manage their work-life balance; by increasing the time they can spend with family and by reducing stress. By allowing staff autonomy and the flexibility to manage their own work schedules can lead to a greater sense of control leading to employees feeling more satisfied in their jobs.
In the Work Flexibility and Job Satisfaction: Shifting Workplace Norms study a clear work flexibility and job satisfaction relationship was found. Additionally, a greater flexibility to deal with family matters increased job satisfaction rates. Interestingly, the greatest job satisfaction came from being able to work from home but only part of the time.
Productivity
Hybrid working is generally seen as going hand in hand with higher levels of productivity where the job involved can be done at home.
CIPD who were involved in the UK’s Hybrid Work Commission to provide recommendations to UK Government on “how to get the most from hybrid working” says there us a “growing body of research [which] shows that the right hybrid and remote work environment in the UK could contribute to raised productivity, increased prosperity and a happier and healthier workforce.” The UK government’s Department for Business and Trade report “Making flexible working the default” concludes that flexible working does increase worker productivity.
In a study by the University of Birmingham “Flexible Working and the Future of Work: Managing Employees Since COVID-19”, 51.8% of managers stated that working from home improves employee concentration, 59.5% agreed that remote working increases productivity, 62.8% believed that it increases motivation and 76.5% believe flexible [hybrid] working generally increases productivity.
HSBC believe that hybrid working is good for business. In a Future For Work survey, they found that “77% of higher-growth companies report higher productivity levels. A similar proportion (66%) say it will help them expand into new markets.”
Forbes report that there is scientific evidence to show that WFH shows an increase in productivity. David Powell, president of Prodoscore says “after evaluating over 105 million data points from 30,000 U.S.-based Prodoscore users, we discovered a five percent increase in productivity during the pandemic work from home period. Although as we know, any variant of the Covid-19 virus is unpredictable, employee productivity is not.”
Staff Retention
A paper by Nicolas Bloom et al “How Hybrid Working from Home Works Out” published in 2022 set up a randomised control trial of 1,612 staff who were hybrid working. Employees were placed into 2 groups based on whether they had even or odd birthdays. One group would WFH on Wednesdays and Fridays while the other group went into the office five days a week. The study found that hybrid working was “highly valued by employees on average, reducing attrition by 33% and improving job-satisfaction measures.”
In the WFH group attrition rates dropped by one-third and work satisfaction scores improved. Employees reported that “WFH saved on commuting time and costs and afforded them the flexibility to attend to occasional personal tasks during the day (and catch up in the evenings or weekends). These effects on reduced attrition were significant for non-managerial, female employees and those with long (above-median) commutes.”
Access To More Potential Employees
Many potential employees are looking for hybrid working as part of their job role. The Career Moves Group states that when hiring new employees companies will struggle to recruit where hybrid working is not offered. They go onto say that businesses looking to higher new staff can expand their potential talent pool by offering remote working opportunities, as remote workers come with fewer geographical constraints. They’ll no longer be limited to only recruiting from a narrow set of locations, allowing them to hire the best candidates for the role, rather than the candidate that’s closest to the business location
The International Workplace Group (IWG) second annual HR Leaders and Hybrid Working report highlights that that “the hybrid model is a prime attraction for potential recruits and leads to a happier, more loyal workforce.” Mark Dixon the Founder and CEO of IWG states “Flexibility is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for employees. Many will not consider new roles that require long daily commutes – they want access to workspaces closer to where they live and an environment that allows them to remain motivated and productive. Companies that understand this have a powerful recruitment edge.”
The report goes onto say that “Hybrid working is one of the most in-demand employee benefits when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent. If companies are unable to offer this as part of a job package, they struggle to recruit and keep the quality of employees needed to operate a thriving business. This is one of the key messages revealed by the International Workplace Group’s 2024 HR Leaders and Hybrid Working Report.”
Commenting on data from the IWG survey Dr Jen Rhymer, from University College London’s school of management, said IWG’s findings underline how “unsurprisingly, a hybrid work arrangement is the most in-demand benefit” that people request before taking a job.
The Guardian states that in 2024, searches for “remote jobs” had grown by more than 1,200%.
Cons
Hybrid working practices can also have a negative side which need to be carefully managed. Some of these are listed below:
Communication Challenges
Working remotely can introduce a whole new set of communication challenges. It’s more difficult to communicate remotely than it is to communicate face-to-face. Without face-to-face communication body language and facial expressions can easily be lost and the nuance of a message can be misinterpreted. It’s also all too easy to misunderstand written communication where tone and emotion may be missed and instead of being able to casually visit with someone in the office to discuss a problem or brainstorm an idea you may have to schedule an online meeting with someone off-site.
Appropriate communication software needs to be in place for all off-site staff, and they will need training to be able to understand how to use it effectively otherwise communication may become problematic. Remote staff also need to have technology that they can rely on, including a laptop and Wi-Fi connection, as technology malfunctions can prevent timely responses and information sharing.
Distractions
Background distractions which prevent employees from being productive and finishing work on time are just as present at home as they are at work. Common remote working distractions include family, pets, other household noises, outside traffic and construction noise. Family may feel that if someone is at home it means they are available to them during work hours.
PPL PRS found that 26% of remote workers say they are distracted for around an hour per day while working from home. Interestingly the top distraction was the temptation to look at their phone. For comparison office workers biggest distraction is talking to other colleagues.
Health Issues
According to Hubble 20% of those who responded to a working off-site survey said their mental health was impacted when working remotely. A lack of social interaction impacted 75% of respondents. 34% said that having to work in a smaller space was taking a toll on their mental health. 24% stated that distractions at home also had an impact. Hubble also found that social isolation was an important factor when it comes to mental health with a higher percentage of those who were living by themselves negatively impacted by mental health issues when compared to those who lived with others.
The Royal Society For Public Health (RSPH) survey in 2021 showed similar results. 29% of those working from home felt it was worse for their health and wellbeing. The survey also found that of those staff who switched to working from home 67% felt less connected to colleagues, 46% took less exercise, 39% developed musculoskeletal problems and 37% suffered from disturbed sleep.
Decreased Social Interactions
Being away from the office impacts social interactions with work colleagues. There will be fewer of those spontaneous water cooler moments that enable catch up moments and allow employees to informally touch bases with each other.
The lack of office time can also impact workplace social networks that may have been built in the past. When staff are out of the office they almost become “invisible” and can find themselves missing out on social interactions within the office space, leading to potential feelings of isolation.
Inability to Disconnect From Work
Remote working can sometimes blur the lines between work and home. In some cases staff may feel the need to keeping working even if they would have already clocked off when working from the office. There’s also the challenge of mentally switching from work to home life when the company laptop is within easy reach. Staff may also put themselves under or feel pressure to always be available.
Potential Security Issues
Hybrid working opens up security concerns around the use of unsecured networks leaving staff more open to phishing and ransomware cyber-attacks and data breaches. When staff work remotely it makes it more difficult to monitor and control access to company data and raises the issue of making sure all software is up to date and patched appropriately. Ensuring the appropriate security measures are in place and staff are trained requires forward planning.
Monitoring
It’s important to monitor how staff are being impacted by hybrid working through regular communication and check-ins. However, this should be managed carefully and balanced with supporting wellbeing and fostering trust. It’s also vital to let staff know that they can get in touch at any time if they feel they need more support, that remote working is no longer working for them or if they want to change their hybrid working conditions.
Is Hybrid Working Right For Your Business?
One size doesn’t fit all so it’s important for business owners to carefully weigh up the positives and negatives to determine if hybrid working is the right fit for their business model and staff.
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