Remote work has significantly shifted employee expectations

An expert on remote work says employers need to create environments that are enticing to workers for hybrid models.

While experts say remote work is here to stay, leaders are going to have to make the office a magnet and not a mandate, according to Aruna Ravichandran, a senior vice president at Webex by Cisco. She says a significant portion of workers say being in an office, even in a hybrid model, would offer a lower quality tech experience and hamper their efficiency. 

She says that while many companies are offering a heightened experience that would naturally cause employees to want to come back into an office, that's definitely not always the case. 

Stanford University Economics Professor Nick Bloom — considered to be one of the top researchers on remote work — said at least one important paper on the topic has been "massively misunderstood," and said research shows that by 2023, working remotely was shown to significantly increase innovation. 

Ravichandran said AI is playing a role in making people much more productive as well. 

Companies and lawmakers have talked about the need to regulate artificial intelligence, but there could be embedded benefits if used responsibility.