Does Hybrid Work Equal Happy Work?

Last newsletter we covered how to make the most of your company or firm’s office space. In this edition we’re diving in to see if the return to office is positive, or if remote work keeps us happiest.

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As someone who’s being asked to return to the office a few days a week, I’ve been genuinely curious about what the data tells us about office models. In this newsletter, I’m focusing on finding out which set of workers is most satisfied in their roles, who is self-reporting the longest hours, and sharing the poll results from last newsletter on how people value the ability to work remotely.

Employee satisfaction
Employees with the highest average reported satisfaction at their job were Hybrid workers, followed closely by remote workers. This stat did not surprise me as people value flexibility overall, and hybrid work can offer you the best of both worlds - making connections with your coworkers and saving commute time most days. In-office workers reported the lowest average job satisfaction scores.

Self-reported average weekly hours worked

Hybrid workers reported clocking in the most hours with the average response coming in at 48.2 hours per week. In-office workers reported slightly less at 46.8 hours, and finally remote workers reported the lowest figure at 45 hours on average.

There are many ways to interpret this, either remote workers are actually putting in fewer hours on average thanks to more control over their schedule and less watercooler chats, or possibly they simply perceive that they work less hours given they save time on the commute and feel like they’ve got more time for other activities. I found it most interesting to see that while hybrid workers had the highest reported job satisfaction, they also reported the highest average hours worked of any category.

Poll results: How do we value remote work?

In the last newsletter, I shared a poll asking how readers value the ability to work remotely and assigned categories of dollar values to quantify this. There were not a ton of responses, with under 50 people answering the poll, but I found the results showed just how polarizing the issue of return to office really is. The top responses were either that they did not value the ability to work remotely, or that they valued it at over $15k, which was the top value metric available.

Everyone wins when you tell a friend

Big 4 Transparency is really only as good as we make it. To date, we’ve helped nearly 200,000 accounting professionals gain access to quality salary data. But so many people don’t know about the website still, and word of mouth is the key to getting the word out.

If you know of anyone who’d benefit from more salary transparency or from the newsletter content that gets published, it’d mean the word if you shared this with them.

Thank you,

Dom