The way we do business life has changed dramatically in the past few years. With Covid, many people started to work remotely (this has been the case for a long time at the-marketing-labs). Then working from home became a new feature, and then what?
Let's pause a moment to look at how this unfolded.
The timeline of how people started to work from home is familiar. We've talked about it in a post back in 2021, reporting on a webinar we held How did Covid-19 disrupt B2B events and catering? A discussion with industry experts.
Ever since, employees have embraced this new way of working.
In a study we conducted in 2022 - 2023 together with our partner Sharp Research, we spoke to 35 professionals and managers, males and females aged 25 to 59 living in France & the UK. We used our own community for the core responses and supplemented it by a few webcam mini-groups.
Results showed participants were unequivocally in favour of working from home at least a few days a week, as a way to introduce more flexibility in their daily life. The benefits were numerous, saving time on the long commute to be able to spend more time with family and organise their day when at home.
The first benefit of working from home, in my situation, is the pure time saving (I have 4 hours of transport a day to get to and from work).
Managers however described a couple pitfalls. The main one was related to internal communication notably their difficulties to connect with colleagues outside their direct collaborators, missing these water cooler moments where a lot of useful information can be exchanged aside from organised meetings.
In a public sector agency, a department manager explained how timelines to get in touch with a person were increasing, rendered more complicated in case the agent was on part-time hours.
The agents are also working from home, some of them at 80% or 90% in addition to remote working. Sometimes it can take 2 or 3 weeks before we manage to see the person in response to a request.
As a consequence, hybrid was considered the way forward. It was there to last.
Working from home has become part of our organization and will remain so! in a hybrid format
If a company does not offer working from home, I won’t go for that job.
Our qualitative research certainly echoes results of other studies.
The membership survey of the Management Consulting Association UK 2024 (1) shows indeed that seven in 10 participants report feeling more satisfied with their job due to the widespread adoption of hybrid working. The same survey for 2025 (2), released a week ago, reveals that flexible working has overtaken competitive salary as the top driver of job satisfaction for consultants, for the first time in six years (37% participants had flexible working in their top 3 vs. 26% participants who mentioned competitive salary as a top 3 driver).
Yet, the same consultants in 2025 also want more in-person interactions among consultants. In fact, 56%Â of members have expressed a preference for increased face-to-face engagements.
At the same time, some companies are calling for employees to come back into the office more often or even all the time. The list of companies asking employees to be more often in the office grows every month.
Is 2025 signing the return to more office-based work and face-to-face interactions? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Get in touch if you want more details about our case study 'How working from home is reshaping the world of work'.
(1) MCA Member survey 2024, conducted by Savanta with 1,264 respondents
(2) MCA Member survey 2025, conducted by Savanta
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