A View From the Office (Hunter Field Editor’s Note)

(Shutterstock)

I’ll admit that I’m probably the outlier in today’s workplace. While most of my peers celebrate working from home, I find myself missing the energy of a bustling newsroom — the impromptu brainstorming by the coffee machine, the collaborative editing that happens when we can literally put our heads together over a story and even the chaos of an approaching deadline. Thankfully, we still get that every Wednesday at Arkansas Business.

Despite my feelings, recent research shows a return to the way things were before the pandemic isn’t coming, and remote work is only increasing. Hybrid job postings in the U.S. have surged from 15% in the second quarter of 2023 to nearly 24% of new positions in the same quarter this year, while fully on-site roles have declined from 83% to 66%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also isn’t helping my case, finding that industries with higher remote work adoption saw measurable productivity gains — a one percentage-point increase in remote work correlates with a 0.05 percentage-point boost in total factor productivity. The only constant is change, and that’s OK.

But a troubling paradox is emerging. While a Gallup poll in May found fully remote workers report the highest job engagement at 31% compared with 23% of on-site workers who work remotely only if needed, they’re also less likely to be thriving in their overall lives — only 36% versus 42% for the on-site group. They report higher stress, anger and loneliness.

Hybrid, of course, is the best-of-both-worlds approach, but the data tells us we have to be even more creative and intentional about fostering community at work. We are social creatures after all.

That, however, is a delicate balance. Companies pursuing return-to-office mandates are discovering harsh realities, needing 23% longer to fill job vacancies and see hiring rates drop by 17%, according to We Work Remotely’s 2025 State of Remote Work Report. Those companies also are more likely to lose employees they can’t afford to, namely senior, highly skilled workers and women. My preference for in-person collaboration appears to be a luxury many businesses can no longer afford.

And since this week’s issue is about commercial real estate, the work-from-home trend has had notable impacts on the local market even as Arkansas has run well below the national average in the percentage of adults working from home. Little Rock’s downtown, like those of many midsize American cities, was built on the assumption of daily foot traffic from office workers. Delis, parking garages, coffee shops all depend on people showing up, and there have been some pain points as this dynamic has shifted post-COVID.

Companies have also struggled to determine how much office space they need in a hybrid world.

Remote work isn’t going anywhere, and the data suggests it’s going to become even more common. We must continually adapt our expectations, our real estate and the ways we connect.

Email Hunter Field, editor of Arkansas Business, at hfield@abpg.com