HR directors the world over face quite the challenge in preparing their workforces for a return to their offices, whatever that may look like.
Employee opinions on the safety, wisdom and necessity of leaving their homes to go back to work cross the spectrum, with some horrified at the notion, some eager, and others at every point in between.
Productivity hasn't taken much of a hit in most cases, but an increasing number of workers cite declining levels of happiness and mental health.
And while some people love working from home, surveys show significant numbers are discouraged or even feel trapped by the Zoom calls at their kitchen tables, desperate for a chat with co-workers at the water cooler.
It's that latter group that, in their misery, could offer suppliers a glimmer of hope that business travel could return at a faster rate than the slow, staggered return to the office many HR execs are planning.
For this group, according to a recent study by market research firm Martec, appears to be disproportionately populated by the professional, white-collar experienced workers who most frequently travel for business.
Martec classified only about 16 per cent of respondents in a survey of 1,214 US workers it released in November as "thriving" – those who love working from home and don't miss the interaction of an office environment. This group is disproportionately female, according to Martec, and more importantly, disproportionately entry-level.
On the flip side, 32 per cent of respondents, disproportionately younger, consider themselves "trapped" in a work-from-home environment, and another 27 per cent consider themselves "discouraged" and miss the social aspects of a typical work environment. These groups include proportionate levels of men and women, but they skew towards somewhat younger and they also skew towards professional, white-collar and managerial employees.
Why does this matter? However the pandemic progresses from here – and predicting that seems a fool's errand – it seems clear that most businesses will not mandate employee returns to office spaces en masse.
A September Conference Board study showed that only a quarter of the 330 HR executives surveyed expect more than 90 per cent of their employees to work from their offices a full year after Covid subsides.
In contrast, 34 per cent of respondents project that, even a full year after the pandemic subsides, more than 40 per cent of their companies' employees still will be working from home.
While some workers, then as now, will be required to physically be in workplaces due to their positions or responsibilities, employee preference will otherwise play a role in return-to-work strategy, especially if companies want to limit in-office capacity.
As such, it seems quite likely that the people who hate working from home the most will be the most likely to volunteer to return to the office, and they're the people who, generally speaking, are most likely to have business travel as part of their responsibilities.
A world in which the most likely workers to stay at home post-pandemic are entry-level, non-managerial employees is not a discouraging one for travel suppliers. It's why, even when offices remain less than fully populated, suppliers might find the most eager to get back to in-person work might be their lifeline to get back to travel too.