Well, that’s a wrap, folks. As of today, more than 1200+ qualified and vetted IT Decision Makers have completed ETR’s October 2022 Macro Views survey offering up their professional input on topics ranging from budgets, spending priorities, hiring trends, cloud workloads, remote work, and much more. Over the next 7 days, the ETR research team will work (nonstop) on analyzing the data, culminating in the Macro Views Findings Webinar one week from today (request access here).
Last week we offered up a higher-level sneak peek of our preliminary Macro Survey results that covered our Top 5 Takeaways from a headline perspective, but now with the survey officially closed we’re diving into one very specific aspect of the survey that still carries weight even two and half years after the onset of the pandemic, remote work. With daily headlines of "productivity paranoia." and "quiet quitting," along with the numerous socioeconomic impacts of shifting labor forces, the debates surrounding remote work endure.
As the ITDM quote above illustrates, there is a massive philosophical divide between companies and workers. Some business leaders have even been bold enough to gleefully predict that the recessionary environment and ensuing loss of jobs will get their precious worker bees back into their buildings, which is a good look on a real estate developer worth more than $8 billion that was recently caught forcing his professional sports team to lose games (looking at you Mr. Ross). Without the ability to directly evoke Chavez or Gompers to argue the other side of Mr. Ross' stance, this is one of those times to lean on ETR's most recent Macro Survey to cut through the hype and examine the data. In this article, we dive into the remote, hybrid, and in-office data across several industry verticals and enterprise sizes. However, if you want the full analysis, then it’s time to get off the fence and finally start your own free trial.
Ok, enough talk; let's dive into the data. The visualization slide above depicts several different organizational trends ETR has been tracking since we first launched the Macro Survey in March of 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, I want to draw your attention to the employment situation based on our 1200+ survey respondents, where we see that expectations to lay off employees over the next three months have slightly declined since the end of last year, from the DEC21 level of 5.9% to 5.7% currently. While layoffs may be more muted than some would have anticipated, the rate of increased hiring over the next three months has fallen precipitously over the same period, from 45.3% in DEC21 to 35.2%. In tandem, expectations to freeze hiring have jumped from 8.2% to 22.2% over the same time period.
With that data illustrating the employment backdrop, let's turn toward the specific work mode data that compares fully remote, hybrid, or fully in-office models. In the next three months' trend analysis above, the expectations of having employees to return fully to the office are currently at 20%, which is considerably lower than DEC21 levels of 30%. This metric hit a 2.5-year peak in March of 2022, with 34.1% of survey respondents stating the expectation for employees to return to a fully in-office work environment. The inverse of this analysis comes from respondents indicating plans to have employees fully work from home over the next three months. The height of this metric hit a whopping 92% in June of 2020 and has slowly trended lower; however, the number of respondents that stated organizational plans to have employees work from home remains elevated at 60% in this survey.
Referencing the slide above, ETR further breaks down the workplace options in a second analysis where we ask respondents what percentage of their organization’s workers are operating in a Fully Remote Setting, a Hybrid Setting, or Fully In-Office. In addition, we ask what that percentage breaks down as currently versus what the organizational expectations are in the next six months and what the permanent expectations are for the workforce setting. First, let’s examine the findings among all respondents. Currently, 34% of respondents stated that employees are still working fully remotely, versus 28% fully in the office, with the remaining 38% in a hybrid situation. While we did not ask respondents to define what hybrid means for their organizations, it is telling that 72% of respondents state a remote or hybrid work environment versus only 28% in the office. Surely, those numbers will change as we shift into future expectations, right? Yes, but barely.
When asked about six months in the future, respondents indicated that 32% would be fully remote, 38% hybrid, and 30% in the office. When asked about their organization’s permanent expectations, the number of fully remote dropped to 29%, with hybrid increasing slightly to 39% and fully in-office work increasing to 32%. That is only a 200 basis point transfer from fully remote to fully in office. In a permanent state, 68% of respondents stated their organizations would remain remote and hybrid versus 32% fully in office. Although not shown here, it is also telling that in the past two years that ETR has been asking this question, the permanent expectation has not yet fulfilled the anticipated numbers but generally falls back towards previous levels.
Examining the Remote Work Data by Industry Size and Vertical
When cutting the data by the size of the respondent’s organization, we see that Large organizations (more than 1200 employees) are even more heavily skewed to remote and hybrid with 77% of respondents stating that work model versus only 27% currently in office. On a permanent basis, the data from Large enterprises falls in line directly with all respondents with 68% remote and hybrid versus 32% in office full time. Pivoting to SMB enterprises, these organizations are showing the lowest rates of current remote and hybrid workers with 69% versus the all-respondent rate of 72%. However, the permanent expectations again fall in line with general survey levels of 67% remote and hybrid, as compared to 33% fully in office. Based on these numbers, the size of an organization does not dictate the permanent expectation for work models; however, might that change when we review the data by industry vertical instead?
Breaking the data down into Industry verticals also highlights some wide disparities in work mode expectations. If you are the type of worker that is more productive at home, the data would suggest that you avoid a Government job, with their permanent expectation of fully remote employees coming in at 4%, by far the lowest rate in the entire survey. The next two business verticals with the lowest rate of permanent remote expectations were Energy & Utilities and Education, at 16% and 17%, respectively. Interestingly, all three of these industries also had the highest level of permanent hybrid work expectations with Education at 45%, and Govt. and Energy/Utilities tied at 44%. Given the 4% fully remote rate for Government agencies, it is not surprising that they also take the highest level of permanent expectations for fully in-office workers at 52%. Energy/Utilities and Healthcare/Pharma were tied for second, with 40% of respondents stating that workers would be expected fully back in the office on a permanent basis.
On the opposite spectrum, it was among the IT/Telco organizations where ETR captured the highest respondent rate for permanent remote work with 44% of workers expected to remain fully remote, as opposed to only 21% being fully in office. The business vertical with the second highest remote-friendly work environment was among Financial/Insurance organizations at 31% fully remote versus 28% fully in-office. If stability is what you seek, both the Services/Consulting and Retail/Consumer industries showed a more moderate spread between remote, hybrid, and in-office expectations.
Ok, I could go on forever but that's enough free data for one day. If you would like to see the entire treasure trove of findings in the most recent Macro Survey data, then simply sign up for your free trial. It's data. It's free. It's that simple. See you on the other side.
Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) is a technology market research firm that leverages proprietary data from our targeted IT decision maker (ITDM) community to bring you actionable insights about spending intentions and industry trends. Since 2010, we have worked diligently at achieving one goal: eliminating the need for opinions in enterprise research, which are often formed from incomplete, biased, and statistically insignificant data. Our community of ITDMs represents $1+ trillion in annual IT spend and is positioned to provide best-in-class customer/evaluator perspectives. ETR’s proprietary data and insights from this community empower institutional investors, technology companies, and ITDMs to navigate the complex enterprise technology landscape amid an expanding marketplace. Discover what ETR can do for you at www.etr.ai