Following an increasing trend of companies returning their employees to work from the office, some feel overwhelmed. "I sometimes feel that life is too much. This almost impossible combination of work and career, being a parent, and also a partner and also social life and hobbies and entertainment and more," an anonymous post on Facebook said.
The reality is that unfortunately a lot of companies are returning to offices and the hybrid model is shrinking. I don't understand how it is possible to lead a life like this without mentally collapsing to the point where I am seriously considering just giving up and becoming a housewife," it said.
The anonymous post on Facebook tells the whole story of hybrid work in times when the market belongs to employers. The employees, who have experienced hybrid work since the COVID period, arranged their lives around the possibility of working from home as well, and now fear that it is about to be taken away from them. Two weeks ago, Amazon announced that it was returning workers to the offices for five days a week. This bold move raised doubts in the global and local industry: will the trend expand, was the hybrid work model a passing phase?
Andy Jassy, the technology giant’s CEO, informed employees that starting next year, they will be expected to report to the office five days per week — as they generally did before the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020. That’s so Amazon will be “better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business,” he wrote Monday in a companywide memo, which Amazon shared publicly.
According to a report by Business Insider, an executive-level member of the Microsoft staff made the reassurances during an internal meeting. Anonymous sources within the organization told Business Insider that Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Microsoft Cloud + AI Group, let company employees know that the company would only remove the right to hybrid working if productivity levels fall.
Currently, 87% of companies in Israel allow hybrid work, which is defined as at least one day a week from home, according to data from Deloitte Israel. About 75% of those employees who already working in a hybrid work model say that if they were to return to five days a week from the office it would mean significant harm to their well-being.
Since COVID, which forced workplaces to adapt to remote and hybrid models, workers in Israel expect employers to allow them to work part of the week remotely. "We see that since the COVID period until now, there is a trend of asking whether the job allows remote work days is the first question that candidates ask in interviews. This is a top priority for employees," said Inbal Namir from Deloitte Israel.
According to her, if the employees have the option to choose between two jobs, where one allows hybrid work and the other does not, they will choose the one that allows flexibility, even if the salary is lower. Most workplaces allow two to three days of work from home. However, there are also workplaces that allow only one day of work from home.
"Talents today by definition look at hybrid jobs," said Sharona Mizrahi, a human resources and recruiting specialist at Blumberg Capital. "When I'm looking for employees for a start-up, I think it's right for the entrepreneur to bring everyone to the office. In a start-up in the first stages, it makes sense to all work together from the office, and also talents who arrive at this stage understand that they're coming to a different event,"
In hi-tech, it is possible to notice a slight decrease in the proportion of jobs advertised as 'hybrid', but it is still too early to state that there is a change in trend. According to data from the AllJobs website, the average rate of jobs defined as hybrid in 2023 in the field of information systems was 30% compared to 26% in 2024. In systems analysis, 49% of jobs last year were defined as hybrid compared to 43% in 2024, and in internet and digital, 20% of jobs were hybrid in 2023 and only 17% in 2024.
What started as a temporary solution during the COVID, has over time become an accepted work model that serves both employers and employees. Employers benefit from broader access to talent pools and the recruitment of more diverse employees while employees gain flexibility that allows them to balance work and personal life. "Although in recent times we have witnessed a certain decrease in the number of hybrid jobs advertised in the field, this is a slight correction and not a fundamental change in trend," said Liat Ben-Tora Shoshan, director of careers at AllJobs.
"The hybrid model exists and is here to stay. Even at Amazon, not everyone works five days from the office. In the end, we define who is a talent, and I expect CEOs and HR departments to build a strategy for this. It's important to ask why it is important for the employee to work every day from the office. In Israel, I have not heard of companies that hire full-time employees to work from the office. You even see government agencies that give employees one day a week to work from home," said Mizrahi. However, she pointed out that working one day a week became more common than two or three days a week.
Namir also does not know of companies that switch to five working days from the office but does recognize a trend of managing hybrid work in a more orderly manner. "What I see is that organizations are working around hybrid work and are not going in the direction of five days away from the office but the other way around. Organizations see that productivity has been maintained, contrary to what was thought in the past. They say it can be a win-win situation if increasing remote work can reduce office space."
"Maybe we need a concentrated day where everyone is in the office and then I can do some kind of process in the office on those days. Moving from a completely open model to a more managed direction. This is by no means a movement of moving back to the office," she added.
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