The third attempt to get workers back into an office setting is upon us, with corporate giants such as Elon Musk demanding that workers attend the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week, or “pretend to work somewhere else”. 

Whilst working from home does have its benefits, it seems that the trend favours the employees more than the employers. And if work is able to be done remotely, the flexible, more economical nature of outsourcing can seem like a much more attractive option.

The first 2 attempts to get workers back into their offices were stopped in their tracks by an uptick in Covid 19 cases, and the Delta and Omicron variants, forcing businesses to relent on their plans to get employees out of their homes and into cubicles.

After two years of adapting to “The New Normal”, it seems that this time around, companies in all sectors are looking to return back to reality, with everyone from tech start-ups, to Wall Street giants announcing their timelines for returning to the office.

This sharp pivot in work style, however, is not so popular with the workers themselves, with surveys from the likes of Forbes over the last year or so showing that employees adamantly responded that they would rather quit than commute back to an office.

To soften the blow, the dominant style of work being adopted is the hybrid model, in which people will be asked to go to work for two or three days a week at their office and the rest of the time from home or wherever they so choose.

With huge amounts of complications involved with these hybrid working models, sometimes the most beneficial move can be to outsource elements of work virtually, eliminating the need for employee contracts and benefits, whilst keeping the flexibility and ESG benefits of a remote working environment.