Return to the office five days a week? How about never again

They control how much you make, what you do and even when you need to be on the internet.

But if this week proved anything, it’s that America’s largest companies — on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and everywhere in between — are struggling to keep their grip on a previously sacrosanct part of working life: Where you need to be to do your job.

Read more: The 8 most popular industries for hybrid work

Within just the past few days, Amazon.com delayed its office return by four months — corporate staff won’t head back until January. For BlackRock and Wells Fargo, the delay was a month, from September to October. This comes on the heels of recent postponements at Apple and Lyft, Google and the video-game company Roblox. All were responding to the rapid spread of COVID’s delta variant.

“Delta is probably the final nail in the coffin of the five-day return to the office,” said Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who has studied work-from-home trends. “The five-day return was still an option after the initial pandemic in summer 2020, but became increasingly unlikely when this stretched into 2021 and we all got used to working from home.”

Firms facing worker shortages have had to offer ever more generous work-from-home packages. That has given employees time to grow accustomed to Zoom meetings, lunch-hour naps and greater childcare flexibility.

Just think about it: Some employees have not set foot in their offices for nearly 18 months now. Add to that concerns about the Delta variant and you get sighs of relief from the homebound.

Read more: COVID isn’t the only virus employees could be bringing back into the office

“I’m safer at home,” said Ganiyat Lawal, a 27-year-old who works in strategic development at Amazon and admits she was excited to hear about her firm’s delayed back-to-the-office date. “I used to have a long commute. Not having to worry about being late to work and finding parking? It just takes away a lot of that stress.”

Lawal’s calculations about the safety, convenience and efficacy of working from home are increasingly common.

Pay cut

Some 65% of American workers who said their jobs could be done entirely remote indicated that they would be willing to see their pay cut 5% if it meant they could continue working from home, according to a new survey by Breeze, an insurance company.

A number of workers would be willing to go much further: the door. A recent survey of 1,000 U.S. adults found that 39% would think about quitting if their employers were not flexible about remote work. That figure jumped to 49% for younger workers according to the poll, conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of Bloomberg News.

Certainly, many employees would like to return to the office, at least part of the time.

Nwachukwu Obigbo, a 28-year-old from Dallas, was hired as an adjuster for State Farm during the pandemic. He was originally supposed to head back into the office in September, but those plans were delayed by a month.

“I’ve never been in the office other than a few times to collect equipment,” he said. “I like working from home, it’s very relaxing. I get to play music in the background. But me being a new hire, it would be cool to interact with my coworkers a little bit.”

Screen time

The experiences of Obigbo and Lawal — who also joined her team during the pandemic — reflect a new reality as the days, weeks and months of remote work drag on: Many employees have only ever really known their colleagues and bosses in the context of screen time.

Time, of course, is a crucial element in negotiations. (Those who have it on their side tend to have the upper hand.) And the relationship between an employer and employee is ultimately a negotiation, one that may be shifting in favor of the latter. Wage pressure is on the up. Honeywell International, which makes everything from jet engines to chemicals, has raised wages more than 10%. More job ads are disclosing salary information, previously a safely guarded secret. And remote work has become the hottest perk in the tech talent wars.

Lauren Rivera, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, says flexibility in the workplace will be crucial for employers going forward.

“What we know from research is that when people feel physically or psychologically unsafe, its really hard to do your best at work,” she said. “People are rethinking jobs that don’t fit their lifestyles or meet their safety needs. After the pandemic is over, if employers want to retain women or workers with disabilities, they’ll need to offer flexibility.”

According to Rivera, what makes great leadership is responding appropriately to changing environments.

That is what Ryan Trout is trying to do.

The executive director of the Lewis Charitable Foundation in Los Angeles says he seeks to keep his “finger on the pulse” regarding a return to the office for his team.

His staff have been working from home since the beginning of the pandemic. He isn’t such a fan of being homebound but instead of making his entire team come in, decided to get his own desk at a local WeWork.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “No one wants to put on a mask and come to work right now and they shouldn't have to. There was a general consensus that everyone wanted to work from home.”