At Home or In The Office? How Common is Remote Working in 2025?

Back in 2020, when we were all in lockdown and companies were scrambling to keep themselves going, the slowly growing conversation about office versus remote work was kicked into overdrive. The advantages of remote working were clear and for many employees the perks of working from home massively outweighed the experience of office work.

For a time it seemed like the office might be on its way out and fully remote companies represented the future of work. Five years later and things haven’t quite panned out that way. While many companies have retained some form of remote/hybrid working, others have been quick to get back into their former office-based routines.

Today we’ll be talking about what the tradeoffs are both for employers and employees, why the professional world hasn’t fully embraced remote work the way it once seemed it was going to, and that all important question, how many remote workers actually are there?

The Case Against Remote Working

At a glance, remote working seems like a win-win situation. Companies don’t have to pay the costs of renting and running an office. Employees save on travel expenses, can choose to live wherever they like, have zero commute, and can have full control over their own working environment. Who could possibly be against any of that?

While it’s easy to blame companies for wanting to micromanage their employees and keep a closer eye on their working hours, as a matter of fact plenty of employees themselves would now prefer to work in an office. Without the atmosphere of colleagues around you and the defined separation between work and home, some people find it harder to focus.

Furthermore it can be difficult to stop your home life from intruding into your work life. Do you really need to hire a baby sitter during the school holidays? Surely you can keep an eye on them while working away on your laptop.

Of course, that’s not to say companies haven’t had a major influence on returning to the office either. Although some smaller startups have thrived by embracing a fully remote structure, most traditional employers are now encouraging a hybrid model at very least.

There is a cynical argument these companies are trying to keep a closer eye on their employees. This is true up to a point but it’s also fair to say that establishing a sense of workplace culture and camaraderie is much more difficult when people aren’t in the room together.

In an ideal workplace, people go above and beyond for the benefit of everyone, but without a physical office, employees are less likely to feel that sense of shared ownership. Professional relationships tend to just be that bit more distant.

The Advantages of Remote Working

Of course, remote working certainly isn’t dead. In fact, there are still a lot of reasons why remote working is better in the right use cases.

One area where almost all employers have been willing to embrace a hybrid working model is in handling sick days.

This can be a tricky issue. Some employers may pressure sick staff into working from home when they should be resting. At the same time, remote work makes it easier to accommodate employees with chronic conditions that don’t stop them working but make regular office attendance difficult. This is particularly true for people with disabilities that can flair up at times unexpectedly.

Hybrid working is also a great way to keep valued employees on during the early years of parenthood. Although, as we already mentioned, looking after kids while trying to work from home isn’t ideal, hybrid working can really help parents to figure out their schedule. With no commute, it’s a lot easier to fit the school run in and when mixed with fully flexible hours, it gives parents the freedom to base their work/life balance around the needs of their family.

So How Many Remote Workers Actually Are There?

The debate on office vs remote work is far from settled but it has started to level out. In the UK, the numbers have been fairly stable for the last year or two with  those travelling to work sitting around 40%-50%, hybrid working at around 30% and full work from home at around 10%-15%.

Where we see a trend, it’s been in the slow shift from office workers to hybrid workers while work from home has stayed largely the same. Put simply, the people who were working from home at the start of 2023 mostly still are, while the new hybrid workers are mostly made up of former commuters.

So what can we say about the future of work in 2025? Well, it seems that hybrid is the best of both words and while it may never replace traditional office culture, it’s certainly still on the rise.