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Great Expectations: Making "Hybrid Work" Work

After sitting on the cusp of hybrid work for more than a year, many companies are at a long-awaited inflection point: the lived experience of hybrid work.

One thing from the research is clear: We are not the same people who went home to work in early 2020. The past two years have left a lasting imprint, fundamentally changing how people define the role of work in their lives. The challenge ahead for every organization is to meet employees' great new expectations head on while balancing business outcomes in an unpredictable economy.


To help leaders navigate the shift, the 2022 Work Trend Index outlines five urgent trends from an external study of 31,000 people in 31 countries along with an analysis of trillions of productivity signals in Microsoft 365 and labor trends on LinkedIn:

Employees have a new "worth it" equation

53% of employees say they're more likely to prioritize their health and well-being over work than they were before the pandemic.

And the Great Reshuffle isn't over: 52% of Generation Z and millennials are likely to consider changing employers in the year ahead, up 3% year over year.

Managers feel wedged between leadership and employee

50% of leaders say their companies are planning a return to full-time in-person work in the year ahead.

54% of managers say leadership at their companies is out of touch with employee expectations, and 74% of managers say they don't have the influence or resources to drive change for their teams.

Leaders need to make the office worth the commute

38% of hybrid employees say their biggest challenge is knowing when and why to come into the office, yet only 28% of leaders have created team agreements to define these new norms.

Flexible work doesn't have to mean "always on"

After two years, weekly meeting time for the average Teams user is up 252%, and chats sent per person each week is up 32% — and still climbing. While workday span has increased by 46 minutes, after-hours and weekend work are up 28% and 14%, respectively.

Rebuilding social capital looks different in a hybrid world

With 51% of hybrid workers considering a shift to full remote work in the year ahead, companies cannot rely solely on the office to recoup the social capital we've lost over the past two years. 43% of leaders say relationship-building is the greatest challenge of having employees work in a hybrid or remote environment.

"There's no erasing the lived experience and lasting impact of the past two years, as flexibility and well-being have become non-negotiables for employees," said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Modern Work, Microsoft. "By embracing and adapting to these new expectations, organizations can set their people and their business up for long-term success."

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IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

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Great Expectations: Making "Hybrid Work" Work

After sitting on the cusp of hybrid work for more than a year, many companies are at a long-awaited inflection point: the lived experience of hybrid work.

One thing from the research is clear: We are not the same people who went home to work in early 2020. The past two years have left a lasting imprint, fundamentally changing how people define the role of work in their lives. The challenge ahead for every organization is to meet employees' great new expectations head on while balancing business outcomes in an unpredictable economy.


To help leaders navigate the shift, the 2022 Work Trend Index outlines five urgent trends from an external study of 31,000 people in 31 countries along with an analysis of trillions of productivity signals in Microsoft 365 and labor trends on LinkedIn:

Employees have a new "worth it" equation

53% of employees say they're more likely to prioritize their health and well-being over work than they were before the pandemic.

And the Great Reshuffle isn't over: 52% of Generation Z and millennials are likely to consider changing employers in the year ahead, up 3% year over year.

Managers feel wedged between leadership and employee

50% of leaders say their companies are planning a return to full-time in-person work in the year ahead.

54% of managers say leadership at their companies is out of touch with employee expectations, and 74% of managers say they don't have the influence or resources to drive change for their teams.

Leaders need to make the office worth the commute

38% of hybrid employees say their biggest challenge is knowing when and why to come into the office, yet only 28% of leaders have created team agreements to define these new norms.

Flexible work doesn't have to mean "always on"

After two years, weekly meeting time for the average Teams user is up 252%, and chats sent per person each week is up 32% — and still climbing. While workday span has increased by 46 minutes, after-hours and weekend work are up 28% and 14%, respectively.

Rebuilding social capital looks different in a hybrid world

With 51% of hybrid workers considering a shift to full remote work in the year ahead, companies cannot rely solely on the office to recoup the social capital we've lost over the past two years. 43% of leaders say relationship-building is the greatest challenge of having employees work in a hybrid or remote environment.

"There's no erasing the lived experience and lasting impact of the past two years, as flexibility and well-being have become non-negotiables for employees," said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Modern Work, Microsoft. "By embracing and adapting to these new expectations, organizations can set their people and their business up for long-term success."

Hot Topics

The Latest

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...

In March, New Relic published the State of Observability for Media and Entertainment Report to share insights, data, and analysis into the adoption and business value of observability across the media and entertainment industry. Here are six key takeaways from the report ...

Regardless of their scale, business decisions often take time, effort, and a lot of back-and-forth discussion to reach any sort of actionable conclusion ... Any means of streamlining this process and getting from complex problems to optimal solutions more efficiently and reliably is key. How can organizations optimize their decision-making to save time and reduce excess effort from those involved? ...