As much as 2021 was synonymous with an enormous surge in fully remote work — with at least one person working remotely in around 40% of U.S. households — the past several months have seen the beginnings of a reversion of that trend.
Goldman Sachs wants its people back in the office five days a week. Amazon AMZN, Apple AAPL, Disney DIS, IBM IBM, Blackrock and Meta META have all instituted some iteration of a hybrid schedule. Even Zoom ZM, that enabler of remote work, has asked its people to make the commute twice a week.
This comes as the percentage of remote workers continues to dwindle, hitting lows on par with the beginning of the pandemic. Throughout September, only about 26% of households had at least one person working remotely for at least one day per week, according to Census Bureau data.
Related: Employment expert breaks down the future of remote work
An October survey by Resume Builder additionally found that 90% of companies plan to return to office by 2024. Only 2% of the 1,000 business executives surveyed said they have no plans to ever require in-person work.
Despite corporate desires to see workforces back in their cubicles, workers aren't necessarily interested in entirely giving up the benefits of working from home. An August Bankrate survey found that nearly 70% of U.S. adults would prefer a hybrid schedule to fully in-person work. And 64% would prefer fully remote work to a fully in-person environment.
"Now that people have seen or experienced changes forced by the pandemic, there’s no putting that proverbial genie back in the bottle," Bankrate's senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick said in a statement.
With employment experts and trends pointing to some sort of hybrid situation, tech startup Overalls has found a way to make in-person work a bit more palatable.
The HR startup, co-founded by Jon Cooper in 2021, aims to act as a "life concierge" service. Overalls works with companies to act as an additional benefit, granting employees a second set of hands to tackle any number of non-work-related problems that arise in the course of a day.
Related: Employment expert highlights vital caveat in the push to end remote work
How it works
Once a company is set up with Overalls, its employees can send any life curveballs straight to the team by dropping a message in the app. Overalls' team of people (alongside machine learning algorithms) sift through each request, doing the heavy lifting to solve a number of problems, from finding a last-minute repairman to providing legal advice on a pressing issue.
Cooper, in an interview with TheStreet, said the company has seen a growing variety of requests, including requests asking for help in finding refinance options for student loans and filling pharmaceutical prescriptions.
"The average employee estimates we save them about 3.2 hours per request," Cooper said. That amount of time (and stress) saved quickly adds up.
"It's like having an extra set of hands with things from finding childcare, helping with a parent who needs medical care and so on. It's a stress relief, but at the same time people lose about 17% of their work day dealing with these life issues," he said. "So we're able to help bring people back time in their workday so they're more productive at the office."
And with people headed back to the office, Overalls provides the kind of time-saving help that helps combat time suddenly lost in a commute that, back in the days of more widespread remote work, didn't exist.
"Going from office to home required readjusting two years ago during the pandemic," Cooper said. "Now everyone's re-readjusting."
"We're seeing employers also who are essentially empathizing with their employees who are saying: 'I know coming back to work is going to be tough. And we're gonna ask you to do three, four days a week. Here's a service to help you with that,'" Cooper said.
Overalls came to market at the beginning of 2023. The growth so far, Cooper said, has been "somewhat extraordinary."
The company, after closing a $4.6 million funding round in June 2022, has achieved a total of $8.6 million in funding.
Get investment guidance from trusted portfolio managers without the management fees. Sign up for Action Alerts PLUS now.
