By Howard Rabinowitz, Workflow contributor
Late on a Friday in September 2022, General Motors sent a diktat to all salaried workers: By the end of the year, they must return to the office three days a week. Days later, amid fierce pushback from non-factory employees, CEO Mary Barra sent another email announcing that GM was putting the policy on ice.
GM’s swift reversal is a reminder that, for many industries, hybrid work, where employees work part of the time remotely and part of the time in-office, is a work in progress. Research by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom finds that hybrid work adoption is lower in industries that rely more on face-to-face interaction (e.g., retail, healthcare, hospitality) and jobs that require on-site labor (e.g., manufacturing, construction, transportation).
But those industries will have to accelerate their rate of adoption if they want to remain competitive and retain workers. A whopping 83% of employees across all industries want their jobs to go and remain hybrid, according to a 2021 Accenture survey. To stay competitive, companies must deliver the change that employees want, or find innovative ways to reimagine how tasks are performed.
Bloom’s latest research shows that an acceleration may be underway. Between September and October, manufacturing, retail, and healthcare (among others) all saw modest upticks in hybrid work adoption.
“Much of this may be driven by market pressures,” says Bloom. “If you want to hire a marketing or finance professional in manufacturing or health, you are often competing with sectors like finance and tech, so you need to offer competitive working conditions, which usually include work-from-home.”
But here’s the rub: 44% of jobs today can’t be done remotely, according to a Gallup survey. So employers are trying different tacks to make on-site jobs appealing or begin to convert their jobs such that they can be done remotely. Here’s how retail, manufacturing, and healthcare are confronting hybrid work challenges in their sectors.
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