If you’ve read any headlines about remote work recently, you might be forgiven for thinking remote work was just a temporary fad that’s well on its way to being dead and buried.
After all, a huge array of companies — including giants ranging from Apple and Amazon to X (formerly Twitter) and Zoom — are mandating some degree of a return to the office (RTO).
But is remote working really going away? In reality, the answer isn’t a simple yes or no. As remote and hybrid work consultant Sam Spurlin told CNBC, “There’s a lot of people talking about RTO as a very simple answer for fixing a lot of very complicated and complex problems within organizations.”
Ask 10 experts if remote workers are more productive, and you’ll get 10 different answers. For example, on the one hand, a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that global remote workers save an average of 72 minutes a day by avoiding their commute, and 40% of that reclaimed time goes back into working. On the other hand, economist Kevin Drum, drawing on Federal Reserve Bank of New York data, estimates a decline of 3.5 hours worked per week since remote work became widespread.
So, which is it?
The reality is that different organizations, teams, and individuals experience different effects. There is no universal productivity outcome for remote work, just context-specific ones. This makes it difficult for employers to generalize. For every team that thrives on autonomy, there’s another that misses the magic of spontaneous whiteboard sessions. The only honest answer to “Is remote working going away?” is: not everywhere, and not for everyone.
Consider: in October 2022, 17.9% of U.S. workers teleworked some or all of the time. By February 2025, that figure had risen to 23.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, even in the face of all these RTO mandates.
“Contrary to the common media narrative that all employers are moving back to fully in-person work as quickly as possible, the data actually suggest that remote work is still making gradual gains, though these gains are mostly due to the expansion of hybrid work schedules,” says Justin Ladner, senior labor economist at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
The future of remote work isn’t collapse or conquest; it’s flux. The landscape is splintering into an array of possible arrangements, from “remote-first” to “office-preferred” to “flexible core hours.”
If remote work is on the ropes, someone forgot to tell job seekers. Just 20% of LinkedIn job listings are for remote or hybrid positions, but those roles account for a staggering 60% of all applications on the platform. From the perspective of job seekers, flexibility is no longer a perk; it’s a baseline expectation.
In fact, forcing employees back to the office without clear benefits can backfire. “We do find significant evidence that return-to-office mandates hurt employee job satisfaction,” says Mark Ma, associate business professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
And with a labor market that remains tight in many sectors, few employers can afford to lose high performers over rigid attendance policies. A poorly handled work-from-home policy is a huge talent retention risk.
The key with any remote, hybrid, or in-office work protocol is intentionality and thoughtful strategy. Too many companies implement return-to-office policies (or, for that matter, remote work policies) based on intuition, peer pressure, or short-term reactivity to company or market events, rather than actual planning.
“The disaster scenario, which too many companies end up in, is when everyone must come in two days per week or so, with no further clarity,” says Stanford economics professor and remote work expert Nick Bloom. “Then they come in and realize their team is all at home, which defeats the purpose. They didn’t come in to use the Ping-Pong table, and there’s no point in coming in just to shout at Zoom all day.”
In other words, the real challenge is not choosing between remote or office work; it’s making sure whichever model used actually works. The best work from home policies account for workflows, coordination, and team dynamics rather than badge swipes.
So, if the question of remote work isn’t all or nothing, the most likely outcome for most companies is some form of hybrid work program that offers structured flexibility. Employers need a solution that can balance the desirability of remote work to employees with the needs of the company to facilitate productivity and workforce effectiveness. “Let’s face it,” Doug Dennerline, CEO of performance management platform Betterworks, told Forbes, “hybrid work is here to stay.”
Employers who are finding success have taken time to define their expectations:
Flexibility doesn’t mean “anything goes.” It means understanding your team, setting guardrails, and giving people autonomy within a well-communicated framework.
Is remote working going away? Not really. But the era of improvised flexibility is ending. What’s replacing it is more structured, strategic, and data-based.
In this environment, employers don’t need to panic or reactively hop on trends they read in a headline. They need to plan. A smart work-from-home policy in 2025 is about aligning work models with real business goals and employee needs. Whether you lean toward hybrid, in-person, or remote, what matters most is consistency, communication, and compliance. In the end, the future of remote work is something you design — deliberately.
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