One of the biggest issues facing senior management is whether or not to bring everyone back to full time office based working, as it was before the pandemic, or to implement some hybrid workplace scheme that allows or even encourages working from home.After nearly 18 months of managing to have entire companies working remotely, there has been a solid test case of the pros and cons - for both companies and employees.One thing most agree on is that there is no turning back. Where we work has evolved and looking ahead requires finding the right balance between offsite and office-based work arrangements for different segments of their workforce. It’s Amazing How Fast We Can AdaptThere’s nothing that drives change like having no alternatives. The pandemic put almost every company around the world in that exact situation. And with lightning speed most made changes, found solutions, modified those solutions - and managed to remain in business. Mainly because the alternative was to shut down.Of course there were trade offs, and those trade offs varied widely depending upon individual employee and company needs. However, companies were able to adapt quickly to working remotely. Most found that there were upsides and downsides to remote working. For many senior managers, now it’s not a matter of whether to bring everyone back to the office. It’s a question of how to take the benefits of remote working and the benefits of office working and establish a new hybrid model.Companies plan to define hybrid working arrangements in many different ways: according to specific time commitments, work type, and worker categories, according to the World Economic Forum.A McKinsey survey revealed that C-suite executives expected that in the future, between 50 and 70 percent of their G&A employees will work remotely for a substantial portion of their work time. Only 20 percent expected their workforce to return to a full on-site model. According to consulting firm Workplace Intelligence, 79 percent of C-suite executives say they will permit their staff to split their time between corporate offices and remote working, if their job allows for it.From an employee point of view, nearly 49 percent prefer working from home and 34 percent said they would quit their jobs if they were forced to return to the office, per a survey by employment consultancy Robert Half.At this time, companies are looking at models that have people in the office either a certain number of days per week or month - or for specific meetings. For example, at IBM how often an employee goes into the office will be determined by work deliverables or the need for team collaboration. To address safety concerns, companies like Adobe will allow employees to make reservations for office desks on the days when they go in.Remote Working Pre-Pandemic Long before the pandemic hit companies both large and small had been staffing their organizations with some combination of on-site employees who worked on-site and those who were working off-site - typically from home.Remote came to mean a spectrum of somewhere between always in the office and always remote. In those days, off-site team members were often employed as ‘independent contractors’ or ‘service providers’, even those who were working full time for the same company.For example, as of 2018, an estimated 5.3 percent of the workforce in the U.S. worked from home, up from 4.1 percent in 2008, according to a US Census Bureau American Community Survey.For many businesses and the people working for them, the arrangement was mutually beneficial. At that time, the employees saw the benefits of work-from-home as being less stressful, eliminating long and often expensive commutes, and helping them to be more productive. What We’ve LearnedCountless startups operate remotely from their launch - and this was before COVID. The tech sector has been a leader in remote working with big employers such as Salesforce, SAP and Amazon being amongst the top employers of remote workers. Companies with large customer service teams were also early adopters of remote working, with workers based in their domestic markets as well as off-shore.Since remote work requires reliable, at-home broadband connections that can power video conferences it has been restricted to areas with access to that tech, which often rules out many rural areas.While working from home has its advantages, having access to an office space is critical – not only for building relationships, but also so people have a space to go to when they need to focus on their work. This is likely to lead to the resurgence of co-working spaces that offer flexible leases, could be nearer to employees homes and don’t require companies to fit out and maintain office spaces.Recent research from Workplace Intelligence and Achievers found that nearly one-quarter (23%) of remote employees aren’t being recognized frequently enough. The study also uncovered that recognition is a key driver of employee inclusion and belonging, and being recognized makes people feel more connected to their teams and their manager.Making the Impossible PossibleAdapting to the challenges of social distancing restrictions forced management to find creative solutions and thus ideas that would have been eschewed in other times came into practice as a means of survival.Prior to 2020, who would have envisioned doctors appointments being conducted online? In many places that become commonplace - and will enable doctors to serve people who cannot easily get to their offices.Thanks to the evolution in tech tools, more manual or in-person labor has elements that can be - and are being- done remotely. Not only has video conferencing improved exponentially, so have other tools like 3D prototyping and virtual reality that eliminate the need to physically be in the same place as the product or process. In reality, even when everyone is working in offices, they will still be using much of the same technology. A person working in London will still need to communicate with colleagues or customers in other cities or countries. Suppliers in Asia will still need constant communication with buyers overseas. That communication took place before COVID and will continue to take place after the pandemic is over. It’s just that thanks to rapid technology developments, it will be easier and can be done from a laptop and wifi connection.