A study by AT&T and Dubber, a cloud call-recording provider, finds most businesses still lack a comprehensive hybrid work strategy.
The State of the Industry: Future of Work survey gathered insights from senior executives about current and emerging work models, the challenges those models create, and the technologies that can help businesses adapt through 2024.
Survey findings indicate hybrid work—a mix of on-site and remote work—will become the standard operating model across industries by 2024. Key results include:
- 72% of organizations do not have a detailed hybrid work strategy, and 76% lack the right key performance indicators (KPIs) to support hybrid models. Respondents expect hybrid work to be dominant by 2024, with 56% of work performed off-site.
- There is tension between employee preferences and organizational expectations: 86% believe employees prefer a hybrid model, while 64% think their organization prefers on-premise work.
- All respondents (100%) said a hybrid work model will help attract younger talent.
- Respondents identified 2021 as a turning point in workplace practices: at that time only 24% of employees worked on-site, whereas before COVID-19 non-traditional arrangements were often seen as perks rather than standard practice.
Survey participants identified three primary barriers to successful hybrid work: lagging workplace innovation, insufficient oversight, and cultural shifts. However, executives believe these obstacles can be overcome through strategic investment, deliberate remote culture-building, and targeted technology adoption—particularly artificial intelligence (AI).
Top concerns for CXOs include maintaining employee oversight, preventing loss of institutional knowledge, and preserving company culture—issues traditionally associated with in-person work. While many organizations report that mass adoption of new work models has been largely effective—79% say employees remained productive—confidence in sustained innovation is lower, with only 45% expressing confidence in employee-driven innovation during this period.
AI and machine learning (AI/ML) were identified as the most transformative technologies, with clear value in employee training, enterprise search and learning, and conversational support tools.
Although employee productivity is showing maturity and analytics adoption is increasing, the research highlights remaining gaps in areas such as revenue leakage and employee retention. Executives see a need for deeper analytics and AI-driven insights into both customer and employee interactions. Mining and transforming data from remote conversations can help organizations build new operational models for targeted business functions.
Alicia Dietsch, senior vice president of AT&T Business Marketing, said: “There’s been an irreversible shift in how business is done because of COVID-19. A successful talent program now requires a hybrid work policy, but that policy must be backed by a strategic, tech-first cultural reset to sustain growth and remain competitive. Organizations should assess whether they have the in-house expertise to lead this change or whether they need partners who can go beyond remote infrastructure to help design a tech-first remote business strategy.”
Steve McGovern, CEO of Dubber, commented: “We’ve taken the first steps into a ‘work from anywhere’ world. Moving employees out of the office was necessary, but physical distance shouldn’t mean operational distance.
“Our technology, delivered via AT&T’s networks as part of an AT&T service, enables organizations to capture every conversation, convert it into data, and share insights as needed. Understanding employee performance and wellbeing can significantly influence how businesses manage hybrid environments. Real-time sentiment analytics and other AI-driven tools make it possible to extract actionable intelligence from these interactions.”
“Organizations acted quickly to separate workforces from the workplace. They now need to move with the same urgency to deploy tools that close the gaps created by distance. Prioritizing closer connections with customers and employees should be on every executive’s agenda, and these capabilities are available through services such as those offered by AT&T.”
The Future of Work study concludes that many companies implemented stopgap measures to enable hybrid work, leaving most without a detailed, long-term strategy. As remote work endures, businesses face a cultural and technological reset—where AI and ML will play crucial roles in enabling advanced capabilities that support innovation and collaboration.
Additional research highlights include:
- Hybrid work and diversity: 91% believe hybrid models will improve workforce diversity.
- Cultural readiness: 58% feel they currently lack the culture to sustain hybrid work long term.
- Impact on innovation and collaboration: 79% say hybrid work supports productivity, but 45% feel it hampers innovation and 54% report negative effects on collaboration.
- Conversational support: 71% believe AI and ML applied to conversational help will have substantial business impact.
- AI and ML in conversational insights: These technologies are expected to influence employee productivity, customer intelligence, talent attraction, revenue leakage prevention, call center intelligence, and talent retention.
Note: Promotional event references and external links from the original article have been removed to keep this summary focused on the study’s findings and implications for organizations planning hybrid work strategies.