The Permanently Imperfect Reality of Hybrid Work

Hybrid work ticks many boxes – but it'll never be a one-size-fits-all solution for every worker and company. Plus, how bosses won the fight for power this year.

Hybrid work will only ever work for some employees

After a few years of post-pandemic confusion, the debate over return-to-office seems to have landed on widespread hybrid work. Throughout 2023, organisations tried a largely new way of working at scale – whether that's a common model of a fixed three days in office with two at home, or other flexible patterns.

Workers are generally in favour of these hybrid set-ups. But while more workers and companies are becoming accustomed to hybrid working, some consistent issues have emerged in these nascent trials.

Some of them may merely be teething problems, while others appear to perhaps be more systemic – and threaten to become endemic.

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How bosses won the fight for power in 2023

Tension between workers and bosses has risen dramatically throughout the past few years – especially around the return-to-office battle. As employees seek to retain the flexibility they've prized for more than three years, employers have sought to instil greater rigidity, often through fixed working patterns that require employees at their desks.

Since the pandemic, workers have largely had the upper hand over executives, whether due to a favourable labour market or simple outright stubbornness to give up their remote set-ups. But 2023 marked a turning point: for the first time since Covid-19 hit, amid a weakening economy and cooling labour market, employers are coming out on top. 

Yet although this power struggle has seemingly ended in favour of bosses, workers haven't lost all they've fought for – millions of employees have ended up with greater flexibility, autonomy and pay than perhaps ever before. Yet going forward, say experts, the new hybrid working environment looks set to be dictated by employers for the foreseeable future.

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The emerging AI that could threaten 'safe' jobs

Many workers may have believed that burger-flipping robots in fast food restaurants, or advanced fabrication machines in factories, would represent the first wave of AI-related job losses.

Yet the light-speed adoption and evolution of generative AI tools may now mean knowledge-work jobs that were long considered "safe" could be threatened even faster than workers anticipated. That includes creative positions that many presumed would be hard to automate, in fields like marketing, music production and graphic design. 

Accordingly, researchers have found that the "exposure curve is upward-sloping", says Mark Muro, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, who focuses on the interplay of technology, people and places. This means people in what may have traditionally been thought of as higher-echelon, professional positions are the workers most at threat of replacement by AI.

That's because generative AI tools and technologies can – or will soon be better able – to do all many things that have, in years past, been left to highly skilled humans: think tasks such as putting together marketing plans, search strategies and much more.

Part of this is new technology hitting the market. Robots that act like AI colleagues are on the way – and in some cases, they're already here. While there is reason to think that AI may be a boon to workers, there are also reasons many people working in knowledge-work positions should be looking over their shoulders.

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Thanks for reading.

— Meredith Turits, Editor, BBC Business Features