The chief executive of Zoom talked about hybrid work at a Thursday panel.
Eric Yuan spoke at a virtual panel at BoxWorks 2022, saying the hybrid work model is not that straightforward and his video communications company is still trying to figure out what is a sustainable hybrid work model for us. He said that a lot of companies are probably in the middle of the process to embrace it.
Yuan said that companies are dealing with varying definitions of hybrid work.
How many days have you spent in office? How many days are there at home? He said something. You know, sometimes you want employees to come back to the office. Is it necessary for all employees to go back to the office or some departments? The Zoom CEO said that other factors include technology and whether to assign employees designated desks or practice desk hoteling.
Yuan said that Zoom's office utilization rate is less than 50 percent. Employees want to meet in person, but they don't want to meet in the office anymore because the workspace is not big enough, Yuan said. Off-site meetings are also scheduled.
There are a lot of challenges, he said. We're going to figure out a way to embrace hybrid work. Aaron Levie, who spoke at the panel featuring Yuan and HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan, asked Yuan about where he thought hybrid work would be in the next year or so.
If you look at high-tech companies, two days or three days in office or three days at home is a good thing, he said. I think that's the final hybrid work formula for most of the companies. In extreme cases, Yuan projected that some companies could go five days a week mandatory, five days remote. Many companies, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, have recently taken measures to reduce remote work and return to office. In the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, companies in New York City and elsewhere had to send their employees home.
There are so many benefits to having a hybrid or digital-first work environment, including the flexibility to talk with multiple customers in a single day, according to Yuan. He said that the flexibility has helped with recruitment competitiveness and allowed Zoom to hire people anywhere in the world.