It’s been a year since the pandemic began and many companies are starting to return to work. Cherubic conducted a survey across our portfolios and found out who is returning to work, when, and how, as well as what tools they use to support remote working. We hope this survey will help inform your decision-making about remote-working tools, returning to work and building your community.
Twenty-one Cherubic portfolio founders participated in this survey. The survey focused on four aspects: remote-working tools, office space, people and remote-community building.
For remote-working tools, here are some of the ones our portfolios are using:
Regarding office space, we investigated companies’ HQ policy, physical office, office presence, and mask-wearing requirements. Here’s what we found:
- Having a headquarters may no longer be mainstream. Only 38% of companies will go back to a pre-pandemic HQ strategy, while the rest are considering hubs or not having a HQ, which implies employees will be able to work from different locations.
- Nearly a quarter of participants are not returning to a physical office. The vaccination process is the major factor affecting the return-to-office schedule.
- An office presence is now part-time, with nearly half of the companies accepting a part-time employee office presence and only 20% remaining full-time.
- Mask requirements in the office are largely undecided.
In terms of people, we surveyed companies’ vaccination requirements and remote-working policies. Here are the results:
- Only 28% of companies require vaccinations for returning to the office.
- Remote-working is becoming a new normal. The majority of companies will allow employees currently working remotely to keep doing so and future key hires to work remotely if desired.
- Most companies suggested remote-hiring stayed at pre-pandemic levels, while another 35% considered it more difficult.
For remote community building, here are some methods the companies shared with us:
- Digital social hours (games, drinks sent to employees)
- Daily company-wide all-hands meetings
- Donut app in Slack
- Group lunches 2x a week
- Quarterly in person off-site meetings post-vaccination
- Execs traveling to visit distributed hubs of employees
- Relentless discussions about integration and clear communication
- Biweekly results sharing across teams
