Bulletins

Hybrid work is fantastic. Except when you're the only person who shows up.

"I think we're alone now."

An empty office

For hybrid workers, commuting to an empty office is the stuff of nightmares.

Photo: Moment/Getty Images

What’s the biggest bummer of hybrid work? Going to the office and finding nobody there except you.

After two years of remote work, the office is shaping up to be a place that many workers only want to visit for a particular reason. For most, that reason is to see and collaborate with co-workers — and it’s hard to do that without planning ahead.


Clearly, flexibility has its limits when working with other people: More than 70% of workers say they want the freedom to choose their own schedules. But even more (75.6%) want to go to the office on the same days as their colleagues, according to a February survey of U.S. workers from WFH Research. Most workers don't want a rigid work-from-office schedule, but they do seem to want enough structure that their office visits are worthwhile.

And for most, that means they're not showing up to an empty office. College-educated workers cited in-person collaboration (61.3%) and socializing (56%) as the two biggest benefits to working on site.

Those two were mentioned even more often than face time with the boss, which only about one in three respondents cited.

So, how are workers avoiding the commute to a sparsely populated office? There’s some evidence from the office software maker Envoy that they’re planning their work-from-office days in advance.

As part of its 2022 workplace trends report, Envoy looked at its clients’ desk booking records for clues about how workers planned their trips to the office last year. Envoy found that during the spring and summer of 2021, desk bookings only came in a day or so ahead of time. But by November, workers were booking desks as much as three days in advance, Envoy found. (Advance bookings then dropped off in December, when office traffic took a hit from the omicron variant.)

“Part of this [increase in advance bookings] was due to COVID related workplace capacity limits,” Initialized Capital’s head of content, Candy Cheng, wrote in a blog post about the report. (Initialized is a longtime Envoy investor.) “But the data indicates a growing trend that employees are becoming more proactive about planning their hybrid work schedules ahead of time.”

This trend toward planning ahead might also have to do with snagging some non-video face time with particular co-workers. An Envoy survey last year found that knowing who was going to be in the office played a role in 37% of workers’ decision about when to go in.

There's no shortage of enterprise companies that want to sell you desk-booking software, but your company might already subscribe to a software suite that provides the same features. Companies with at least one Zoom Room license subscription can use Zoom's new Workplace Reservation feature that lets employees reserve spaces and see maps of which of their co-workers are coming into the office and where they plan to sit. Microsoft lets you use Outlook shared calendars or Teams to schedule in-office time together.

If you work at a smaller company where reserving space isn't an issue, you could just, you know, talk to your co-workers and tell them when you're going to be in the office. If you don't remember how to talk to your co-workers, you can always Slack them.

Latest Bulletins

Mobile game revenue will decline for the first time in history this year, market research firm Newzoo now says in a revised outlook for the 2022 global games market. While the whole game industry is expected to contract by 4.3% — another first since Newzoo began tracking the market in 2007 — the company is predicting a 6.4% decline in mobile game spending on top of a 4.2% decline in console game spending.

Keep ReadingShow less

Amazon is planning to lay off thousands of employees, Protocol has learned, ahead of what the company has cautioned will be a slow holiday shopping season.

Keep ReadingShow less

Google agreed to pay $391.5 million and make changes to its user privacy controls as part of a settlement with a coalition of 40 state attorneys general. The coalition accused Google of misleading customers about location-tracking practices that informed ad targeting.

Keep ReadingShow less

FTX has filed for bankruptcy and the crypto company also announced that founder Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned as CEO.

Keep ReadingShow less

Salesforce recently updated its internal policies to make it easier for managers to terminate employees for performance issues without HR involvement, Protocol has learned, a move that comes as the software giant looks to shed as many as 2,500 jobs.

Keep ReadingShow less

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said fraud and scam reports comprise the top complaint it receives about virtual currencies — and that customers are finding little help from companies when it happens.

Keep ReadingShow less

Elon Musk sent his first email to Twitter staff late Wednesday, warning of a difficult economic road ahead and telling employees they need to be in office for a minimum of 40 hours per week. "Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company, but there is no way to sugarcoat the message," he began, ominously.

Keep ReadingShow less

Binance isn’t buying FTX after all. The crypto giant said Wednesday it has decided that it “will not pursue the potential acquisition” based on a “corporate due diligence” review.

Keep ReadingShow less

On Wednesday, John Kerry unveiled a plan for a new carbon credit program aimed at mobilizing private capital to help middle-income countries transition away from coal and move toward renewable energy.

Keep ReadingShow less

Meta announced it was laying off more than 11,000 employees Wednesday morning, slashing jobs in its recruiting department and refocusing its remaining team on AI discovery, ads, and its investment in the metaverse.

"I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here," Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a message to employees that was also posted online. "I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted."

Keep ReadingShow less

Al Gore has one mission this week at COP27, and that’s to give climate negotiators what he hopes will be a critical tool to address the crisis at hand: an independent, global inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, down to the individual facility.

The Climate TRACE coalition just released the world’s most detailed inventory of global greenhouse gas emissions, which Gore, a founding member, is unveiling on Wednesday at the United Nations climate summit in Egypt.

Keep ReadingShow less

Way back in March, your friendly Protocol Climate team offered you some tips for writing a climate plan that doesn’t suck. Surely you took that advice. But if for some reason you didn’t, the United Nations has your back.

Keep ReadingShow less

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said Tuesday the crypto powerhouse signed a deal to acquire rival FTX.

Keep ReadingShow less

Salesforce is preparing for a major round of layoffs that could affect as many as 2,500 workers across the software vendor, Protocol has learned, in a bid to cut costs amid a new activist investor challenge and harsh economic conditions.

Keep ReadingShow less

BlockFi has introduced a new digital assets interest product for accredited investors, after previously agreeing to shut down a yield-paying crypto product that the SEC said was illegal.

Keep ReadingShow less

The Justice Department said Monday it seized $3.4 billion worth of bitcoin stolen in the 2012 hack of the Silk Road dark web marketplace.

Keep ReadingShow less

U.S. election infrastructure is exceedingly secure, and voter fraud here is sorare it’s comparable to your annual chances of getting struck by lightning. Despite this, former President Donald Trump and a long list of allies in the Republican Party have spent the last two years questioning the overall integrity of the U.S. election system. Many of those allies are now candidates themselves, and their coordinated attack on the country’s status as a democracy is not a relic of 2020. Some have already startedrepeating these “Big Lie” charges ahead of next week’s midterms. And the social platforms that help them spread their message haveprepared few measures to stop it.

Keep ReadingShow less

The White House just laid out its climate tech priorities to reach net zero by 2050.

Keep ReadingShow less

Coinbase said Thursday that it lost more users in the third quarter. But the decline wasn’t the disastrous drop that Wall Street was expecting, and that sparked a rally in the crypto company’s shares after-hours.

Keep ReadingShow less

The Biden administration announced $9 billion in funding Wednesday to improve home efficiency, which could help support the installation of up to 500,000 heat pumps. With winter approaching and utilities warning of gas shortages, there are some major challenges facing the technology that money can be used to tackle.

Keep ReadingShow less

Block beat earnings expectations, with strong growth largely fueled by its Cash App business. Traders sent shares up more than 12% after-hours Thursday.

Keep ReadingShow less

Stripe is laying off 14% of its staff, its co-founders said Thursday, as the fintech startup must start "building differently for leaner times."

Keep ReadingShow less

Roku saw its revenue growth slow in Q3, and warned investors Wednesday that things are about to get worse: “A lot of Q4 ad campaigns are being canceled,” said Roku CEO Anthony Wood during the company’s Q4 earnings call. “We’re seeing lots of big categories pull back. Telecom, insurance … even toy marketers are planning on reducing their spending.”

Keep ReadingShow less

Green jobs and corporate climate pledges abound, but skilled sustainability professionals are scarce.

Keep ReadingShow less

Robinhood reported a drop in third-quarter revenue but also a narrower loss on Wednesday, in a sign that it might be stabilizing its business as it attempts to recover from a staggering drop in the stock and crypto trading activity that fueled its growth.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bulletins