The global pandemic forced IT teams and business leaders to dramatically rethink where and how their employees work. With the post-pandemic recovery underway but challenged by the Delta variant and uneven vaccination rates, many organizations are still trying to determine what their future hybrid work model will look like. Recent survey data from International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that stability and geography will define the balance of future work strategies.

On a global basis, physical office sites are still expected to be the dominant location for work as organizations find themselves in a more stable and "steady state" environment. However, the mix of office-based, remote, non-office, and field workers is expected to vary from region to region. Asia/Pacific workers, for example, are more likely to claim the physical office space as a primary work location compared to the United States and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). In EMEA, a much higher share of survey respondents (27%) prefers remote or work-from-home as their primary work location. Meanwhile, the share of the U.S. workforce currently working remote (44%) is expected to decline, but field and non-office locations are gaining favor as primary work locations.

"The ratio of support for hybrid work opportunities within and across geographies will no doubt continue to evolve. Work primarily within office facilities, while a dominant choice, will certainly be part of a hybrid mix that will flex to address new and unforeseen challenges to organizational, political, and social instability," said Holly Muscolino, research vice president, Content Strategies and Future of Work.

Another aspect of these evolving hybrid work strategies is the effort to achieve "experience parity" – a comparable employee experience for a hybrid workforce by ensuring that all workers securely interact with corporate resources (including people) with a consistent experience and context across locations. While experience parity has not yet been achieved by most organizations, nearly half the companies surveyed by IDC indicated that their hybrid work technologies, policies, and processes were "in progress" with most key resources available to remote employees with some lingering access or user experience issues. U.S. organizations have made slightly more progress toward experience parity, but considerable work remains to be done.

"Investment in digital and work transformation technologies align with organizational imperatives around improved business resilience and increased employee productivity," said Amy Loomis, research director, Future of Work. "We are also tracking a direct correlation between spending levels with stronger momentum toward achieving experience parity for hybrid workers while lower spending levels align with more limited or ad hoc approaches."

On September 23rd, IDC will host a Future of Work webinar, Defining Work Location, Automation and Culture for a Hybrid Reality, that examines how hybrid work has evolved from being a reactive stopgap measure to a fully embedded model for managing the Future of Work. Details and registration for this complimentary webinar, featuring Amy Loomis and Holly Muscolino, are available at https://goto.webcasts.com/viewer/event.jsp?ei=1492672&tp_key=9c8725af79.

The IDC report, Finding the Next "Steady State" of Hybrid Work (IDC #US47359721), looks at how ongoing global disruptions are challenging organizations to consider a variety of hybrid work locations. The report, Momentum and Investment in Hybrid Work Models (IDC #US48125421), examines how organizations have increased investment in digital and work transformation to support hybrid work models, as the ongoing disruption challenges efforts to return to pre-pandemic work practices.

About IDC's Future of Work Practice

As organizations accelerate and expand digital transformation initiatives, traditional work models are no longer sufficiently nimble, adaptive, or scalable. IDC’s Future of Work research practice helps organizations recognize the necessity of moving to work models that support an increasingly diverse, distributed, and dynamic workforce securely, effectively, and productively. To learn more about IDC’s Future of Work research practice, please visit https://www.idc.com/promo/future-of-x/work

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights.

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Recent survey data from IDC shows that stability and geography will define the balance of future work strategies.