By Ringside Talent Partners
May 8, 2024
Headlines can leave the impression that large companies are behind the times when it comes to offering corporate employees work location flexibility, but recent research paints a different picture.
Eighty-two percent of large U.S. companies in the latest Flex Index by Scoop offered some work location flexibility.
For comparison, the Flex Index for the fourth quarter of 2023 across all company sizes found that 62% offered some work location flexibility.
The new report canvassed more than 2,200 “enterprise” companies — U.S. companies with more than 1,000 employees. According to the report, while enterprises make up less than 0.2% of all U.S. companies, they account for more than 10% of jobs nationwide. The 2,200-plus enterprise companies featured in the report employ more than 50 million people around the world.
Enterprises often are viewed as pacesetters across business and industry, so developing trends among them are worth noting for all companies.
- Looking at the types of work flexibility being offered by enterprises, 61% featured a structured hybrid model, while 21% offered employees full flexibility (20% employees’ choice and 1% fully remote and without the option of working in an office). The other 18% required corporate employees to work in the office at all times — the widely accepted norm before the pandemic.
- Further breaking down the numbers, 46% of all enterprises included in the report structured their hybrid work model around requiring a minimum number of days in the office. On average, they required 2.5 days in the office (35% required three days; 19% required two days). The Flex Report by Scoop estimated that an average employee, facing five commutes instead of 10 in a typical week, would avoid 111 commute hours and drive 5,000 fewer miles per year.
- While 21% of enterprise companies across all industries offered a fully flexible work model, the rate for the financial services industry checked in at 29%, making it the fourth most flexible industry in the report (tech companies led the way at 49%).
- Among enterprise companies that designated specific days of the week for in-office attendance (just 8% of all companies in the report did), 75% required Tuesday, followed closely in popularity by Wednesday and Thursday. Just 24% required Monday attendance, and just 8% required Friday.
- While just 8% of companies with more than 25,000 employees required employees to work in the office at all times, 23% of companies with 1,000 to 5,000 employees did.
Courtesy of Journal of Accountancy