BY ALI DONALDSON, STAFF REPORTER@ALICDONALDSON

For Inc.

The return-to-office push is losing steam.

The share of U.S. businesses requiring their employees to work in the office five days a week fell to 39 percent in July, down from 42 percent in April and 49 percent in January. That’s according to new data from the Flex Index, which tracks the office requirements of more than 6,500 companies and is compiled by the hybrid workplace software company Scoop. The remaining 61 percent of businesses now offer either remote or hybrid policies. For employers that require their workers to spend some time in the office, the average is now 2.56 days per week. That number has barely budged from January, when the average requirement was 2.49 days in person.

Relaxed office policies are even more popular among smaller businesses, which have largely abandoned the idea of bringing their teams back in person every day. The Flex Index also found that 76 percent of companies with fewer than 500 employees are either fully remote or do not require employees to come into the office. Even with the remote-friendly tech sector stripped out, 59 percent of small businesses have adopted flexible policies.

Scoop co-founder and CEO Rob Sadow expects the share of companies with full-time in-office policies to continue to decrease slightly during the next 12 months, with between two and three days in-person winning out as the standard in the long term. “We talk about it a lot when an employer says that they would like people back in the office four days or five days a week, but it looks like the average employer doesn’t want that,” Sadow says.

At Boston-based Bevi, which makes bottleless water dispensers for offices, gyms, schools, and other commercial spaces, co-founder and CEO Sean Grundy settled on a hybrid approach for his 150 employees, who come into the office twice a week. “There’s no need to have people in the office five days a week if they don’t want to be,” he says. “For many roles, people get more done and focus better working from home or Starbucks or wherever they want to be.”

Grundy added that Bevi’s hybrid work policy has “absolutely” helped with recruiting and retention, and he is not the only one. Businesses offering remote or hybrid work arrangements increased headcount over twice as fast as businesses that required employees in the office five days a week, according to an analysis the Flex Index conducted with People Data Labs last month.

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