Hybrid Working in the UK: Trends & Insights

The conversation around remote work is heating up once again as several companies in the UK mandate a full five-day return to the office. At the same time, discussions around employment rights and flexible working policies continue to evolve. So, what does this mean for businesses and employees?

The push for full-time office work

Many major corporations, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and WPP, have recently called employees back to the office full-time. According to Startups.co.uk¹ (2025), businesses enforcing five-day in-office weeks cite reasons such as:

collaboration & productivity: some leaders argue that innovation thrives in physical spaces where spontaneous interactions and team cohesion are stronger
company culture: maintaining a strong corporate identity is easier when employees share the same space
accountability & management: monitoring performance and ensuring consistent engagement can be more straightforward in an office environment

It's worth understanding in more detail how each of these are affected by hybrid or fully in-office working.

Productivity: a study² in association with Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences (2024) found that employees were not any less productive when working at least 2 to 3 days at home. The study also found that staff retention was improved when working in a hybrid way. Employees with flexible work options also reported higher job satisfaction, reduced stress, and better focus during remote work. The ability to work without constant in-office distractions enabled deeper focus and concentration for longer periods to maximise both productivity and efficiency.

Culture: whilst culture is much harder to measure, having a hybrid workforce provides organisations with the opportunity to redefine culture. Coupled with improved wellbeing for employees, this could lead to a shift that would benefit the organisation. Nurturing a culture of trust, inclusion, and flexibility can strengthen team cohesion, even when employees aren't in the same physical space every day.

Management: when this is used as a reason for employees coming back to the office it often comes down to one thing. Trust. When managers feel that they can't trust employees to do their job properly it can stem from their own insecurities. Not having the skills required to be an effective hybrid manager can however be remedied. All the elements that make managers effective — clear communication and expectations, structured collaboration tools, active listening, and employee empowerment — can be done equally effectively in a hybrid working environment. Some might argue it's even easier in such environments as it amplifies the trust and also requires the work done to be more performance-based, rather than purely assessed on output. A lack of trust usually results in presenteeism, people being at the office for the sake of being noticed, rather than being productive.

However, this shift by some CEOs and managers contradicts a clear preference for hybrid working, with employees valuing flexibility for work-life balance and productivity and multiple pieces of evidence demonstrating higher productivity for appropriately balanced hybrid working.

On the other side of the fence, many employees value a return to the office for reasons such as:

onboarding and mentoring: it has been proven that graduates and new starters find onboarding and mentoring a serious challenge without significant periods in the office
creative content and product development: physical interaction in the right environment is proven to stimulate deeper thinking and innovative solutions
social interaction and camaraderie: spontaneous physical interaction, playful conversations and activities not only boost wellbeing and mental health but can also lead to productive ideas and conversations

The UK Government's stance on flexible working

The UK's employment rights framework is evolving to reflect the demand for greater work flexibility. Labour's ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’ report (Labour.org.uk 2024)³ outlines proposals to strengthen employee protections, including:

a right to flexible working: employees would have the presumption of flexible work, making it harder for employers to deny remote or hybrid requests without valid justification
the right to disconnect: this would ensure employees are not expected to engage in work communications outside of their contracted hours
stronger worker protections: aimed at ending ‘one-sided flexibility’, reducing insecurity for employees

Whilst there are no legal restrictions on mandating in-office work, these policies highlight a clear push towards more employee-centric working models.

Hybrid work as the middle ground

For many businesses, a compromise between remote and office work is emerging as the best solution. Hybrid work policies offer flexibility while still allowing for in-person collaboration. According to Forbes⁴ (2024), hybrid work models can:

boost employee well-being: reducing commute times and improving work-life balance
enhance productivity: employees can focus on deep work at home while using office days for meetings and collaboration
improve retention & attraction: companies offering flexibility often see higher employee satisfaction and reduced turnover

All the above have a tangible benefit to an organisation's bottom line. The cost of employees outweighs anything else when it comes to expenses for a business. If organisations have the ability to increase the performance and reduce additional costs in relation to their employees they will see the benefits.

What should companies do?

Companies should consider data-driven workplace strategies, assessing productivity, engagement, and operational needs rather than enforcing rigid office policies. Those that fail to offer flexibility risk losing talent to competitors that embrace hybrid work.

Understanding how to do this is often the area where organisations fall short and revert to knee-jerk reactions such as implementing 5-day RTO mandates.

As UK employment policies evolve, businesses must stay ahead by balancing business goals with employee expectations, finding a workplace strategy that truly works.

This is where a holistic approach which provides the detail of what needs to be understood and how it can be implemented is valuable. Workplaced provides this information, is easy to deploy and provides the detail that can be implemented by anyone in the organisation.

Why any RTO mandate should not be one size fits all

The conclusion from this brief discussion is clear. Hybrid working has many forms and its calibration should reflect the sector and operations of a business. It should also reflect individual roles, activities, priorities and preferences. Failing to recognise this and introducing overzealous blanket RTO mandates has been proven to end in resentment, presenteeism and churn. Just examining one aspect of this, if we look at different generations, there is growing evidence that each has its own set of preferences.

For example, a 2025 survey by FTI Consulting⁵ found that 42% of Gen Z respondents said they would be excited and 33% would be accepting of a possible RTO mandate, compared to just 33% of Gen X respondents who said they were excited and 25% who said they would be accepting.

Baby boomers and older are least likely to seek alternative employment (31%) compared to millennials (45%) and Gen Z (45%), if required to return to the office full time.

Looking at different sectors, again examining excitement and acceptance of an RTO mandate, those in financial services (70%), retail (69%) and healthcare (67%) said they appreciated the camaraderie as the most beneficial aspect of being in the office. Those in architecture/engineering (76%), manufacturing (76%) and banking (67%) felt they would be more productive in an office setting.

Most significantly for those advocating a full five-day return to the office, the same survey found 62% of hybrid workers would likely seek alternative employment if required to return to the office full time. This is consistent with many other global studies such as Pew Research⁶ (US) 46%, and in the UK a Kahoot! survey reported 29% of 18-24 year olds would quit if required to return full time.

So these and many other professional and academic studies indicate a complex picture of tolerance to RTO mandates and very different preferences as to what they value, not only in this context but also in other studies by gender and psychometrics.

The pendulum swings

Interestingly RTO is playing out very differently across the planet and this is why we have created this series of three very different global perspectives.

Whilst we see in the UK a government-backed policy to embed flexibility and hybrid working as a fundamental workers' right, in the US the government debates eliminating remote work for 94% of federal employees and is putting it into practice through a controversial implementation process by DOGE. We explore the implications of this in the blog from our CSO, Asaël Akkerman, and co-founder Nick Nunnington.

The UAE is moving in a similar direction, refining hybrid models instead of dismantling them. Rather than enforcing rigid mandates, companies here are leveraging workplace analytics to design balanced, results-driven environments. The government meanwhile has a different focus again, exploring how an appropriate hybrid balance can support reduced congestion, sustainability goals, employee wellness and satisfaction.

History shows that workplace trends often swing like a pendulum, from employee control to employer control. Yet, as seen in the UK and globally, when organisations embrace flexibility strategically, they avoid the pitfalls of talent loss, disengagement, and reduced well-being.

The question isn't whether RTO or remote work is better, it's whether your workplace strategy is backed by data, employee needs, and business outcomes. Informed by this approach, what we call ‘hybrid balance’ can be achieved for all employees that supports both corporate objectives and personal profiles, activities and commitments. Finding this perfect blend can support, amongst other things, productivity, staff retention and employee wellness and satisfaction.

Workplaced provides the tools and insights to help businesses navigate these shifts intelligently, ensuring they don't get caught on the wrong side of the pendulum's swing.

Hybrid Working in the UK: balancing Government policies to embed flexibility as a workers right with return-to-office mandates