Want to grow your business? Well, maybe you need to axe hybrid and remote working.

According to a new Rippling report, 46% of businesses with in-office employees report seeing a rapid growth in headcount, compared to 41% with fully remote businesses and 39% with hybrid working policies.

This being said, the survey also found that in-office companies tend to have a greater focus on recruitment – with 41% admitting that hiring top talent is a top priority. In contrast, only 30% of hybrid and 17% of remote companies list this as a priority. 

HR professionals were also found to be impacted, with 71% from remote-first companies stating they struggle with constantly fielding requests for information, whereas only 53% of their in-office counterparts reported the feeling the same.

What’s more, 57% of HR leaders from remote-first companies found it difficult to access real-time data to form strategic insights, compared to only 35% of in-office participants.

HR, finance, and IT teams rely on systems across the organization to make decisions for the benefit of their employers, managers and business as a whole. However, without an accurate view of data, teams are locked into the vicious cycle of never-ending admin work,” Darcy Mackay, SVP of HR and Client Services at Rippling explains. 

“Connecting every workforce system to a single source of truth for employee data allows businesses to automate all the manual work they need to do to make employee changes. Slashing the time spent on administrative tasks frees up employees from mundane tasks and gives them time to focus on bigger goals.”

The time consuming reality of task tax

The survey, which used a pool of 1,200 HR, finance and information technology professionals, also explained the concept of ‘task tax’, which indicates a connection between the amount of time spent on administrative tasks and the rate of growth in remote working companies.

“Our research shows more than half (53%) of HR pros use more than seven tools – and that number jumps to 83% when they are remote. Companies are using so many systems to support remote workers that they’re actually bogging them and their operations down with extra admin work,” Mackay adds.

“And this ‘task tax’ isn’t limited to remote work by any means. Because of so many disconnected systems, every department is spending extra time re-entering information, moving data around, or reconnecting broken integrations.

“That’s why 96% of HR departments, 98% of finance departments and 90% of IT departments want to consolidate their tools.”

On a similar note, 34% of respondents from companies that are not growing felt that they were spending too much of their time on admin, in comparison to only 19% of respondents from rapid-growth businesses. 

So with hybrid and remote working task tax taking its toll on hybrid and remote working, could this be the start of in-office roles making a comeback?