Half of employers want hybrid workers back in offices full time

A study conducted by Towergate Health & Protection of 500 HR decision makers revealed that businesses are bribing workers back to their desks with perks like free meals, socials and subsidised transport.

The figures show that hybrid working is still very much in place, with 30% of companies saying that the majority of their staff split their working time between home and their usual place of work. 

The average company has 39% of its employees working on a hybrid basis, rising to nearly half (47%) of employees among large companies. Just 14% of companies said they had no employees hybrid working.
 
Tactics being used to get workers back to their desks were:
 
Mandatory office days, 29%
Free meals and/or drinks, 29%
Access to the gym 28%
Onsite wellbeing days 27%
More onsite socials 24%
Subsidised transport/commuting costs 24%
Access to in-person counselling 22%
 
While the majority of employers do offer, or have had little choice but to offer, hybrid working, it is clear that many would now prefer staff to be back in their usual workplace.

The study comes as an increasing amount of employers want staff back in offices to improve collaboration and creativity.

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A number of some of the world’s most prolific companies have asked their staff to return to work in the face of economic uncertainty.

Across multiple sectors, companies including Starbucks, Twitter, KPMG, Amazon and Meta re mandating more in-person days, or even adopting strict full-time office working patterns.
 
Debra Clark, head of wellbeing at Towergate Health & Protection, said: “Encouraging employees back to the office will take a careful mix of incentives, and health and wellbeing support will be fundamental.

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"Indeed, as the research shows, many companies have already started to offer wider health and wellbeing support based at the workplace, but with hybrid working now being the norm, these benefits will have to work hard to encourage people back.
 
"Support will need to be appropriate to the different demographics of the workforce and to employees’ differing needs. This means offering a wide range of options, covering all four pillars of health and wellbeing – physical, mental, social, and financial – to help the transition back to the workplace to be healthy, positive, and productive.

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“As working styles widen, employers will have to widen their health and wellbeing offering to match. This will be in terms of what they offer, and where."