More than two years on from the start of the global pandemic, the developing story around the future of work is all about hybrid. After an initial phase of speculation and conjecture about what hybrid working might look like — and some early experiments with mixed results — organizations are now getting down to serious strategy work to make hybrid happen as a long-term option, none more so than in the United States.

According to Microsoft’s latest Work Trends Index, launched in late March 2022, we are now passing the point of no return on the journey to hybrid working. The Index is based on a large scale study of 31,000 people in 31 countries, with an additional analysis of productivity signals in Microsoft 365 and labor trends on LinkedIn. It reports that 38 percent of the workforce are now hybrid workers (an increase of seven points on 2021) and that more than half of all workers (53 percent) are likely to consider transitioning to hybrid this year.