America is entering the great experiment of hybrid work

theguardian.com:

It can be hard to remember what work at the office was like before the pandemic forced millions of Americans to start working from home. That shift was monumental and seemingly implausible, until it happened. But people soon adapted to saying “sorry, you’re on mute” on Zoom calls and wearing sweatpants all day.

This spring, workers are finally heading back to the office en masse and into another untested and ambitious experiment in work life: hybrid working.

“This is a brave new world – we’re doing something we’ve never done before, which is we’re going to go, en masse, hybrid,” said Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford.

Many companies that are bringing their workers back to the office are doing so on this basis, meaning they are allowing employees to do a mix of in-person and virtual work during the week. Some workers will be expected to work a set number of days in the office; others will get to choose which days they want to come in.

The great experiment is already under way. During the week of 9 March, the average office occupancy rate across 10 large US metro areas was 40.5% – the highest percentage since December, according to Kastle Systems.

Companies that once told employees that they would be working from home indefinitely have set dates to return to the office. Microsoft was the first big tech company to announce that it wanted its employees back in the office, by the end of February. Other companies, including Google and Apple, soon followed suit. Twitter, which at the beginning of the pandemic told employees they could work from home “for ever”, said it would reopen its offices in mid-March.

But these companies are telling staff that the era of the five-day office week is over. Some of employees’ time