office workers wearing masks
Image: Luis Alvarez/Getty

People working at home tin can proceed in touch with in-office colleagues via a new service that makes it easy to place calls via Teams. Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams integrates Verizon Wireless business numbers with Microsoft Teams to let outbound calls through the desktop awarding, an integrated IP phone or directly from a mobile device.

Sampath Sowmyanarayan, chief revenue officeholder at Verizon Business organisation, said in a press release that the new service will help big enterprise customers adapt to the current hybrid work environment.

"Nosotros keep to see global demand for unified calling platforms to keep distributed workforces continued," Sowmyanaryan said.

With the new service, a user'due south mobile identity becomes a unified calling and collaboration endpoint, co-ordinate to Verizon, which makes it easier for employers to utilize enterprise policies to mobile numbers. This service also could reduce the costs associated with managing mobile and desktop phones.

SEE: Microsoft Teams: A cheat canvas

Many tech companies have set reopening dates and expect workers to be in the part at least one day a calendar week at starting time. Apple and Google are starting this new policy in early April. Microsoft employees are halfway through a 30-solar day grace period the company set to help people ease back into the one-time routine. Twitter reopened its offices this calendar week. Companies in the financial world are also dusting off coffee pots and resuming business travel.

All these re-entry dates mean that now at that place will exist some in-person days equally part of hybrid work plans. That doesn't hateful remote work is disappearing, at least for most companies. In an IDC survey from December, 45% of It and line-of-business leaders said hybrid work would be an indelible office of embedded work practices and only 2% indicating they had no plans to implement this practice.

Amy Loomis, research manager for IDC's Worldwide Future of Work market research squad, said business leaders have recognized that reopening offices is not an all or goose egg proffer of "return to role or rethink working here."

"Rather than viewing remote work as a point in fourth dimension outcome that nosotros accept passed, they are recognizing that remote and hybrid piece of work are office of our de facto set of options for work moving forrard," she said. "Lesson learned from 2021 is that organizations demand to be prepared to shift gears and ways of working on a strategic basis, not simply reactively."

Loomis said that executives still want people back in the function merely the reasons have inverse from concerns nigh control, trust and productivity to hopes for greater chapters to build culture and proceed employees engaged. Based on her observations, companies are making remote work rules more flexible both in terms of how many days per work calendar week people can exist remote as well as who gets to work remotely.

"We also see sizable investment in reinventing and redesigning office spaces to foster more fluid ways of working betwixt on-site and off-site locations," she said.

Although many workers want to hang on to the option to work from home, there are groups inside the workforce who want to go back to the office.

"While we accept not done an employee sentiment survey at a global calibration we know anecdotally that younger employees who seek confront to face experiential learning and have cramped home function challenges are more eager to accept a alter of venue to an office or satellite role setting," Loomis said.

Future Forum'south Brian Elliott, the executive leader of Future Forum and SVP at Slack, said that flexibility now ranks second only to compensation when it comes to job satisfaction.

"Our research shows 78% of workers want location flexibility and nearly all want schedule flexibility," he said.

Elliott said companies are using this transition fourth dimension as a chance to reevaluate, refresh or maybe even start over with workplace models.

"At that place are clear benefits to a hybrid model with enhanced flexibility – employees are reporting amend work-life balance, greater productivity and even a higher sense of belonging than working total-time in the office," he said. "People have dissimilar needs and well-designed hybrid workplaces are more inclusive of all employees, whatsoever their background or circumstances."

Elliott also sees a tendency away from centralized command-and-command approaches ("one size fits none") to team-level agreements. This means setting new expectations about "when and where people come up together with a purpose that fits the rhythms of their team."

People are rethinking who they want to work for and this means that leaders who desire to concenter and keep talented employees must be intentional about changing work models, according to Elliott.

"They must set principles and guardrails that ascertain how flexible hybrid work will work in their organizations," he said.

Companies need to focus on the benefits of working together in person and plant "a reasonable rationale and value to being in person for all workers of all ages, stages of work and life," according to Loomis.