If some employers were holding out hope that remote/hybrid workmight become a passing fad, employment trendspotters have some bad news: Not so much. "The demand for flexible and hybrid working isn't going away," says Daniel Etra, co-founder & CEO of RethinkFirst. Even with such high-profile examples as Elon Musk demanding a return to the office, "allowing those employees who can work in a hybrid way to do so will pay dividends," Etra insists. Robert Boersma, vice president of operations – North America at Talent.com, notes that office mandates are often deal breakers for potential employees. "We have started to see backlash to some tech companies such as Snapchat and Doordash bringing these mandates into effect, which will be something to pay attention to in the year ahead," he states. "Organizations that listen to the desires of their employees and take their point of view into consideration when making decisions such as return-to-work mandates will win brownie points with their teams, and overall increase employee satisfaction," says Boersma. These statements line up with findings in the 2023 Hiring & Workplace Trends Report, according to a recent release from Glassdoor and Indeed. The inaugural report looks to several countries for insights into labor market trends and the future of work—one of which is remote/hybrid work will be with us for a while.

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Perhaps more importantly, the report underlines a point nodded at by Etra and Boersma: Even with recent layoffs and a recession looming on the horizon, employees are still in the driver's seat. "COVID didn't reverse the long-run demographic trends that will drive tight labor markets for the next decade, but it did accelerate changes to the workplace," write Svenja Gudell, PhD, Indeed chief economist, and Aaron Terrazas, Glassdoor chief economist, in the study's foreword. "Perhaps most importantly, it helped workers wake up to the fact that they have the leverage to demand change in the workplace—and left many employers at a loss about how to deal with this new dynamic." Glassdoor and Indeed's report outlines five trends that will continue beyond business cycle fluctuations and even survive the predicted global recession. Companies focusing on these trends, the authors assert, "will ensure their workplace survives, even thrives, into the future." See our slideshow above for those five trends and other highlights from the report, and click here to access the full study.