Flex Report Q1 2024

About the Flex Q1 Report

Happy Birthday to Flex Index! For the last 12 months, we’ve been tracking the flexible work trends that matter most to you. Of course, we couldn’t do it without the 8,000+ companies on Flex Index, who collectively employ over 100 million employees across 60,000 offices in the United States and abroad.

To say that 2023 was a year of change is an understatement. We observed big firms like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Target decide to lean more toward hybrid work arrangements, while major players like Goldman Sachs and Tesla called employees back to the office full-time, garnering plenty of media attention for their plans.

Despite the attention-grabbing headlines regarding the return to the office, Flex Index tracked a steady increase in flexible work last year. At the beginning of 2023, 49% of U.S. companies were requiring employees to work in person full time. By the end of the year, that number dropped to just 38%, an 11 percentage point change.

What’s in store for 2024? So far, it looks like more debate. UPS recently announced a return to full time in office. At the same time, new research on 137 of the largest U.S. companies found that return to office mandates did not result in significant improvements to firm performance.

In this report, we examine the current state of flexible work in the U.S. at the start of 2024. We also explore brand new analysis on the relationship between employee sentiment and work location flexibility, both in aggregate and in critical areas like culture and compensation.