Who Is Doing What

Preamble

This blog is about work. How and where we work, and why the discussion generated by these questions is relevant to the future of work. The world of work is evolving. This blog will provide some history and context, highlight the push and pull between employees and employers, and sample some Return To Office (RTO) policy considerations. It’s important enough to repeat: The world of work is evolving. Correspondingly, this blog will try to keep pace.

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Who Is Doing What

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on how, and where, many people work. Prior to the pandemic, the vast majority of workers spent 5 days in the office every week. The shutdowns in response to the pandemic forced employees to work from home, or not at all, for an extended period of time. Different companies and different industries reopened their offices at various points after the shutdown was enacted. Many have tweaked their policies as a result of feedback or pushback. Here are a few factors that impact the availability of work flexibility.

Flexibility by Industry

Even within industries that require a high degree of physical presence, some roles can be performed remotely. As a result, while fully in-office is the most logical choice for some industries, no industry has a 100% fully in-office rate in aggregate. At the other end of the spectrum, there are certainly some industries where the vast majority of work can be done remotely. Companies in these industries skew much higher in offering their employees work flexibility.

Table 1 lists the industries with the highest percent of

companies requiring employees to be fully in-office.

Industry	% of companies fully in-office
Restaurant and Food Service	65%
Education	51%
Hospitality	48%
Retail and Apparel	40%
Manufacturing and Logistics	40%

As expected, the industries with the highest percent of companies requiring employees to be fully in-office all require a high degree of physical presence - wait staff, teachers, and store employees must be physically present in order for their respective companies to do business.

Table 2 lists the industries with the highest percent

of companies offering work flexibility.

Industry	% of companies offering flexibility
Technology	97%
Insurance	93%
Media and Entertainment	93%
Telecommunications	89%
Financial Services	88%

The industries with the highest percent of companies offering their employees work flexibility were already established as the companies with the most geographically distributed workforces prior to the pandemic. If a technology team made up of employees across New York, Dublin, and Mumbai offices could work effectively six years ago, it stands to reason that those same employees may be just as effective - or even more effective with the introduction of newer technologies - working remotely instead of in their respective offices.

Flexibility by Geography

Table 3 lists the states with the highest percent of

companies requiring employees to be fully in-office

State	% of companies fully in-office
Mississippi	41%
West Virginia	29%
Arkansas	28%
Kansas	28%
New Mexico	27%

Table 4 lists the states with the highest percent of

companies offering their employees work flexibility

State	% of companies offering flexibility
Massachusetts	91%
Washington	90%
Colorado	89%
California	89%
Oregon	88%

The industries that make up the economy of a state is often a good predictor of the level of flexibility in that state. All of the states in table 3 share Food Services and Manufacturing as two of the main industries, both of which require employees to be physically present. All of the states in table 4 share Technology as one of the main industries, an industry where distributed teams had existed prior to the pandemic.

This phenomenon trickles up to the regional level as well. Many states in the South and the Midwest have companies in the Food Services and Manufacturing industries, while the Northeast and West have a higher percentage of their companies in the Financial Services and Technology industries. So the data in Table 5 should come as no surprise.

Table 5 lists out the regional breakdown of work flexibility

		Offering Flexibility
Region	Fully remote	Hybrid	Fully in-office
South	34%	44%	22%
Midwest	36%	45%	19%
Northeast	39%	46%	15%
West	44%	39%	17%

Flexibility by Company Size

Table 6 lists out the breakdown of work flexibility by company size

		Offering Flexibility
Company Size	Fully remote	Hybrid	Fully in-office
Small (< 500 employees)	73%	15%	12%
Medium (500 - 5,000 employees)	34%	37%	29%
Large (5,000 - 25,000 employees)	23%	53%	24%
Mega (> 25,000 employees)	15%	67%	18%

This table presents three main insights

1. There appears to be a trend towards the hybrid approach and away from either extreme for companies with more than 500 employees - Hybrid is the biggest percentage of all size classifications except the smallest companies.

2. The size of a company appears to be directly correlated to the likelihood of that company offering a hybrid approach. With each increasing size classification, the fully remote percentage drops by 7-11 points, the fully in-office percentage drops by 5-6 points, and the hybrid percentage correspondingly increases by 14-16 points.

3. Small companies are the outlier to the above two trends. One possible explanation is the “No choice fully remote” variant presented in the July 2024 blog post. This is a variant of the fully remote work model where the company has no physical office, therefore all employees must work remotely. Startups, in particular, may be taking advantage of a fully remote workforce to eschew a physical presence altogether, allocating their precious capital on other areas of their business instead.

The Bottom Line

Industry and company size appear to be important factors that companies use when adopting a work location policy. Geography matters, but only as an indirect correlation to the industry in the geography. Aside from the smallest companies - those with fewer than 500 employees - the bigger the company, the more likely they will offer a hybrid work arrangement.

Up Next

September 2024: Why RTO?

Citations

• Flex Index (flex.scoopforwork.com), Q2 2024 Flex Report

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