Will Remote Workers Get Left Behind in the Hybrid Office?

The benefits of working from anywhere can also come with bias against those who aren’t seen around the hallways.

When offices finally reopen, some companies plan to use them in a very different way than they did before the pandemic, giving workers the choice to come in just a few days a week, or not at all. Some employees are eager to return to the office full time as soon as they can, but others can’t imagine ever going back to the way things were. Offering people more flexibility over where they work can help attract and retain talent, companies say. Around 10,000 employees at Google recently applied to work remotely or transfer to a different location, and the company approved 85 percent of the requests. The real estate platform Zillow says more women have applied for its jobs since it announced a year ago that most of its 5,900 employees could work from home permanently. The software company Slack, which also offered permanent remote positions last year, said that among recent hires the number of minority workers was 50 percent higher for those who planned to work primarily from home than for those who preferred the office.