Kemi Ajumobi 
Full time in-office obligations in Fortune 500 companies have increased from 13% in Q4 2024 to 24% today. This is according to the Flex Report. It further states that the average weekly office requirements rose from 2.3 to 2.9 days and by contrast, firms with 5000-25000 employees hardly shifted, with full time in-office rules increasing only 21% to 22%.
Though it is being reported in the dailies that organisations are resuming to full time physical resumption at work, Flex Report shows that only 33% of US firms need this, and while Fortune 500 corporations have shown to be the biggest players to this rule, a lot of them have stuck to hybrid work patterns.
However, there is a gap. According to data from Stanford’s Nick Bloom, while required office days have increased 10% since Q1 2024, attendance has been unstable between 1% and 2% higher.
The report examined US-wide trends to ascertain if prominent shifts toward full time in-office show a wider market swing or just remote cases.
This investigation delved into what is revolutionising America’s leading businesses, and if the smaller ones are following suit. Equally, they also revealed from their findings, that the smaller ones are not.
The report, which also involved an in-depth investigation by Stanford Professor Nick Bloom and his team, showed the affiliation between rules and comportment, exposing the crack between company’s expectations and employee’s response to heightened insistence on physical presence at work.
So, though the number of days required to be present at work increased 10% since Q1 2024, according to Stanford Prof. Nick Bloom, based on Stanford and US census data, attendance remains “flat as a pancake.”
Worthy of mention is that the smaller companies are luring workers with more flexibility. According to the report, 52% of non-tech companies with less than 500 employees remain fixated on completely flexible policies, which is in great dissimilarity to bigger companies who significantly support organised hybrid schedules.
Certainly, the rest of 2025 has a lot to be seen in the adaptability of office workplace flexibility.