The Future of Flexwork: Who’s Headed Back In-Office in Atlanta

MARTA ridership bumped up by 20,000 trips in the last week of February, partially because of Atlanta’s federal workers returning to the office. As more commuters hit the road and office leases keep getting signed, workers wonder: is telecommuting a thing of the past?  

While it spiked to a topic of international conversation during the pandemic, hybrid work isn’t just a “new” normal. In 2018 to 2019, the highest office space utilizations averaged at 51%. People have always conducted work inside and outside of their office buildings, whether because of business trips, offsite meetings, or any other responsibilities drawing workers away from the cubicle. 

At our webinar on hybrid work last week, we shared predictions for the future. Elham Shirazi and Robin Mack, two flexwork consultants from Georgia Commute Options (GCO), joined Emily Easterbrook, Insight Global’s Construction Manager, to shed a little light on your home office’s future.  

“In short, hybrid is not over.”  

That’s how Elham Shirazi began, sharing data from Flex Index, a platform that’s collected and compared flexwork programs from over 13,000 companies in the U.S. 

As Shirazi shared, leading companies are still running remote work: most Apple employees work remotely 3 days a week, and Microsoft has set their policy at 50% of a worker’s time to be spent in the office. Nvidia is leading the charge with a fully flexible workforce, meaning they can work from remote locations or the office as they choose. Airbnb, too, is still on their once-a-month hybrid schedule: workers can work from anywhere, provided they show up to their office at least once a month. 

The larger a company, usually the more structured their flexwork policy. Only 17% of companies with over 25,000 workers have a full flexwork program. However, the vast majority (73%) of these companies offer some amount of remote work. 

With so many people, it’s partially for convenience: when attempting to bring workers back in the office, Amazon brought 2,000 employees back to facilities with only 900 parking spaces and not enough desks to go around, causing some disarray. More companies are sticking to remote options to remain competitive, too: Verizon recently used AT&T’s return to office order to highlight their hybrid opportunities, hoping to sway those who didn’t want to commute 5 days a week.  

Based on worker responses, offering hybrid work is still a competitive choice. The Pew Research Center found via employee polls that about half of currently remote workers would be unlikely to stay at their job if they had to go back in-office. 

Across all company sizes represented by Flex Index, full-time in-office requirements are still uncommon. They’re mostly found in companies of 500 to 5,000 employees, making up about 35% of the group.   

Insights from IG 

“For every single office, we’re back Tuesday through Thursday. We’ve been back for a couple years now and are seeing full attendance,” said Emily Easterbrook of Insight Global’s employees. “We wanted our teams to be in together—it’s really important to our culture, so we brought people back on the same three days across the company.” All teams in the company report to their HQ office in Dunwoody on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. 

While the office is full at least 3 days every week, Insight Global has changed its perspective on why they call teams into the office. They’ve created more collaborative meeting spaces in their Perimeter HQ, allowing for bigger and more frequent meetings, whether the attendees were virtual or in-person. 

Insight Global is also taking steps to make the office convenient for their teams, making sure the in-office effort actually helps productivity. 

“We check in with teams every quarter and check if they need more space, less space, whatever it is,” said Easterbrook. “We have this big building we want to use, but we also want to make sure everyone’s comfortable.”  

The consideration goes a long way in workers that are happy to show up, whether in the building or out.  

“When building a hybrid program, the trade-off isn’t necessarily whether to be remote or be in-person, it’s how to stay productive and respond to both the employee’s and business’s needs,” said Robin Mack, a GCO consultant. 

Filling in negative space 

Within more offices, “the use of the space is changing, and a lot of employers are now making sure they have collaborative space within their offices,” said Shirazi. As more teams adapt to flexwork workstyles, employers have begun retrofitting their spaces to make the most of time in the same building. More and more, employees are driving to work for a reason—not just out of routine.  

“One of the uses I’m very encouraged by in this market is, what do we do with this space that’s underutilized? A lot of office spaces are being converted to apartments,” Shirazi said, referencing major cities like New York and D.C., who are nearing 50:50 ratios of office space to apartment space in 2025 (New York is at 53%, while D.C. is at 62% of office space conversion). Atlanta is 6^th in the nation in terms of conversions to apartments. “I think, in markets where affordable housing is scarce, that this is good news.” 

The retrofitting trend is still going strong in Perimeter as employers (and employees) adjust to the modern, hybrid lifestyle. Office sites like Insight Global and Campus 244 are rethinking where workers want to be, situating themselves close to transit for easy commutes and within walking distance of restaurants and retail for compelling lunch break and post-work options. While the balance between remote work and in-office is still shaking out, Perimeter’s streetscape is capitalizing on all that third spaces can offer.