Hybrid working in decline as Irish employers push staff back to the office

Recruiters report a sharp decline in hybrid roles as employers prioritise on-site work, despite workers’ growing preference for flexibility

Sat, 15 Nov, 2025 - 06:00

Ronan Smyth

REMOTE and hybrid working opportunities, seen as a hiring necessity five years ago, are being rolled back, with recruiters saying there is a growing demand from companies for prospective employees to be on site. This is despite the importance of flexibility to employees.

The pushback against working from home has been growing for several years and many multinationals have demanded that their staff be in the office more often.

At the beginning of the year, Amazon sought to have all corporate employees return to the office five days a week, while TikTok also announced similar measures.

Microsoft staff will return for at least three days a week. Salesforce now mandates four days in the office.

AIB is pushing ahead with plans to change its hybrid working model, despite opposition from staff, who will be required to be in one of their office locations at least three days a week, up from two days a week.

Bank of Ireland said that staff eligible for hybrid working would be required to be in an office at least two days a week from September. It has subsequently announced a number of new hybrid hubs across the country for staff.

The debate over the benefits and downsides of hybrid working was stirred up again earlier this week, when billionaire businessman Denis O’Brien sharply criticised hybrid working, describing it as a “mistake” that had resulted in a “marked decline” in efficiency across most of the Government.

Speaking to the Business Post’s Economic Outlook Forum, O’Brien said the practice was also an impediment to learning, problem solving, and improvement of outcomes.

Following the pandemic, the Government mandated public-sector employers to move to a 20% remote-working arrangement
and published a blended working policy framework to promote hybrid work options for staff.

However, in the programme for government published earlier this year, the Government committed to reviewing this framework.

The emeritus professor and chair of work and employment studies at University of Limerick, Kevin Murphy, says that all the evidence “suggests that people are more productive working from home. They get at least as much done, usually more done, in less time.”

If organisations want to remove hybrid working or work-from-home from their employees, they should make a realistic argument as to why it will benefit them in the long-run, Murphy says. He has yet to see the advantage.

While people can argue about the upsides and downsides of hybrid working, recruiters say that there is a growing expectation from companies for their staff to be in the office more often.

Director at recruitment firm CareerWise Mike Morrissey said there is more a demand from companies for staff "to be present" on site.

The director at recruitment firm CareerWise, Mike Morrissey, says there has been a decline in hybrid or remote working opportunities, as “there is more of a demand now by companies to be present”.

Staff who are on their probationary period are in the office more often than they would have been 12 months ago, Morrissey says.

“Typically, after that, once people get their feet under the table, get established, get to know the business owners, get comfortable within their job, then companies begin to get a little bit more flexible.”

While there is still a demand by job candidates for hybrid working options, those opportunities are fewer than they used to be, Morrissey says.

“Will that continue? I would expect that it will, because of what is going on from a productivity perspective, with companies being challenged by tariffs and the cost to produce goods being a lot more to get to the US market.

“So companies will have to try and reduce their cost base and one way of doing that is by asking employees to do more.”

The labour market has consistently been tight for several years now, with the unemployment rate currently at 5%, which has led to an increase in wages.

Given these constraints, one might expect potential employees to have a very strong hand to play when it comes to whether they accept a job or not, particularly if they are looking for flexibility.

HOWEVER, the job market might be shifting. Job candidates are beginning to see salaries stabilise and with fewer job opportunities, particularly permanent ones, as companies seek to use more contract workers.

“What companies are growing more is their contracting, because we’ve seen that part of our business grow significantly,” Mr Morrissey says. “Since the start of the year, we would have grown our contracting base by at least 16%.”

“Whereas, on the permanent side we would have seen a reduction in those roles being available.” While some employers may be offering some flexibility, opportunities for hybrid working are falling off.

Trayc Keevans of recruitment consultancy Morgan McKinley Ireland, said there has been a "big drop in remote first opportunities, probably less than 15%" of all positions through an agency format.

Global foreign direct investment director at recruitment firm Morgan McKinley, Trayc Keevans, says hybrid and remote working options have definitely been reduced for prospective employees, particularly in the financial services and technology firms.

“There has been a big drop in remote-first opportunities, probably less than 15%, I would say, of all positions being advertised and offered, certainly through an agency format,” Keevans says.

“The conversations we’re having with employers, it has been very much taken off the table for loads of reasons.”

Keevans says one of the main reasons cited by employers is that in-office work is a “retention tool” in terms of cultural engagement.

“Companies are finding it difficult to manage in a remote capacity.

“Getting that engagement and loyalty that tends to retain people, it is difficult to build that virtually. It is not impossible, but it is more challenging.”

But small and medium-sized companies are still using the option of hybrid working as an incentive to attract talent from bigger firms, she says.

However, Morrissey says that he hasn’t really seen many companies offer hybrid or remote working as an option to differentiate them from their competitors, “because there has been a concerted push by probably all companies to get people on site”.

“I probably would have said definitely, maybe 18 to 24 months ago, it would have been seen as a differentiator, but it is becoming less and less.”

When it comes to what employees are looking for in a potential job, Keevans says flexibility is becoming more of a draw.

She says: “When people are leaving a job and there is a level of flexibility, and the new job is offering less than that, that is a bigger decision point than any salary would be now, as to whether they would take it, because they are compromising the flexibility that they would already have.”

Small and medium-sized companies are still using the option of hybrid working as an incentive to attract talent from bigger firms, she says.

She says that there is an onus on employers to ensure that their offices are suitable for the way people work today.

“The need for employers to have invested in their office buildings is critical, if they are looking to improve their hybrid situation and have more on site,” Keevans says.

“The big resistance from people is the way we work now versus how we worked before. A lot more video conversations, video meetings, which in an open-plan environment isn’t practical.

“So if companies haven’t thought that through, haven’t got enough meeting rooms, booths, whatever it might be, it makes for a very uncomfortable work environment,” she says.

“We actually do get people saying they have no problem being on site for whatever number of the hybrid arrangement days, but they are finding it difficult to work in the environment that they are in.”

While companies can mandate more in-office days and potentially improve their office environments to make them more of an attractive option for staff, Murphy says people are “much more satisfied and committed to organisations if they are allowed to have flexibility in their work”.

“It removes a lot of the things about work that are the most painful: The commute to work, the office politics, having on a business suit. All of that stuff.”

He says he rarely sees an organisation “make a realistic argument” as to the benefits of staff being in the office more often.

“If there is a good case to be made, go out and make it and especially make it in terms of saying, ‘Here is why you, as an employee, will benefit, at least in the long-run’.”

He adds that simply demanding people back to the office, without giving a good reason as to why, “is not going to be an effective recruiting tool”.

“What you are going to do is drive away the best employees, who have the opportunity to go work somewhere else,” Murphy says.