After the Great Resignation comes the Great Renegotiation. Over the past two years, millions of people and organizations around the world were forced into hybrid virtual work, many for the first time. Survey after survey has shown that employers eagerly hope their employees will return to the office as soon as possible. Employees? Not so much, for reasons including health, family, and the work–life balance. Now, vaccines and therapies hold out the promise of normalizing life under the coronavirus and its variants, but employees increasingly hold more bargaining chips in a great debate now underway over the future of workplace models.

Our latest research reinforces the idea that hybrid1 work is here to stay. More than four out of five survey respondents who worked in hybrid models over the past two years prefer retaining them going forward (see sidebar, “Our methodology”). At a time when organizations are plagued by burnout, mental-health issues, and record numbers of employees leaving their jobs, leaders who see in-person work as a return to normality must confront just how strongly employees feel about flexible workplace models and their growing leverage to pursue them. We found that more than two out of three employees who prefer hybrid models say they are likely to look for other opportunities if asked to return fully on-site. Despite such popular support, the experience of employees with hybrid work during the pandemic has varied widely in key areas, such as a sense of inclusion and the work–life balance. For some traditionally underrepresented identities, this variability is exacerbated.