As the last few years brought about a global shift towards flexible work arrangements, a new work style has emerged: hybrid work. While some see it as the perfect balance between collaboration and flexibility, others worry about blurred boundaries and potential for missed connections.
Undoubtedly, hybrid working presents a unique set of advantages and challenges. But how widespread is this model, and how many people are looking to embrace it in the coming years?
To answer these questions and delve deeper into the world of hybrid work, we’ve conducted a survey of the UK public, analysed existing data surrounding the topic, and looked into online search trends to bring you all of the latest facts and stats on hybrid working in 2024.
Hybrid Work on the Rise: Summary of Key Statistics
- Hybrid working is the second most in-demand work arrangement, with 22.5% of UK adults having this preference. Whilst fully remote work is the most popular option (24.8%).
- More women than men have a preference for hybrid working arrangements (26.5% vs 21.3%).
- More younger people (aged 16-34) would prefer to work in a hybrid capacity than remote or in the office.
- Southampton has the highest preference for hybrid work among major cities.
- Online searches for “hybrid jobs” have skyrocketed since 2020.
- Remote work surpassed office work in search popularity in early 2022.
How many people want to work remotely in the UK?
In April 2024, we used market research company, Censuswide, to ask 2,000 UK adults ‘Where, if anywhere, would you prefer to work?’, providing them with the following list of options:
- From home
- Hybrid – some time in the office and some time at home
- In an office and/or workplace
- N/A – I do not work
- I do not have a preference
- Not sure
The data revealed that:
More people say they’d prefer to work from home than any other type of work environment, with one quarter (24.8%) of respondents giving this answer.
Hybrid working set ups are second most popular, with 22.5% of UK adults saying that they prefer a mixture of home and office work.
Following closely behind, office or workplace environments were the least popular option, with 22% opting for this.
Please note, we omitted respondents who said they don’t work from the above graph (21.3%).
Hybrid working and gender
So now we know how popular hybrid working is in the UK as a whole, but which gender favours this model most?
Our survey revealed:
- More women than men favour a hybrid working model. With 26.5% of women vs 21.3% of men stating that this is their preferred way of working.
- Whilst far more men than women prefer to work at the office or their place of work (25.3% of men vs 19.1% of women).
- Whilst the proportion of men vs women who’d prefer to work from home is fairly similar (24.2% vs 25.1%).
Age and hybrid working preferences
When it comes to age and working model preferences, younger people appear to have a clear preference for hybrid working.
In fact:
- 16-24 year-olds favour hybrid working over any other option, with almost a third of this age group saying if they had a choice, they’d opt for this setup.
- The same goes for 25-34 year-olds, with a higher proportion of this age group opting for hybrid work than any other age category.
- Whilst 35-44 year-olds have a preference for working from home.
- And 45-54 year-olds and those aged 55 and over would rather be in the office or at their workplace than working in a remote or semi-remote environment.
| 16-24 | 25-34 | 35-44 | 45-54 | 55+ | |
| Work from home | 29.60% | 30.02% | 30.56% | 14.16% | 3.70% |
| Hybrid working | 32% | 34.61% | 20.31% | 10.02% | 1.85% |
| Office or workplace based | 21.60% | 24.28% | 26.89% | 17.27% | 9.26% |
Which UK cities have the most interest in hybrid job roles?
Hybrid work offers the best of both worlds: reduced commutes, greater flexibility and in-person interaction. But does everyone in the UK crave this balance equally? To understand regional preferences, we asked our participants for their current place of residence when completing the survey.
This revealed:
- A higher proportion of people in Southampton than any other major UK city have a preference for a hybrid working model, with almost a third (28.9%) opting for this.
- Following in close second is Belfast, where 26.3% of people say they’d choose a hybrid work arrangement if they had a choice.
- Just over a quarter of people in Glasgow, Leeds and London favour hybrid working models, completing the top 5 hybrid hotspots.
| Town/city | Percentage of people that would prefer a hybrid working model |
| Southampton | 29.8% |
| Belfast | 26.3% |
| Glasgow | 25.8% |
| Leeds | 25.6% |
| London | 25.3% |
| Bristol | 23.7% |
| Birmingham | 23.0% |
| Manchester | 22.8% |
| Liverpool | 22.6% |
| Nottingham | 20.7% |
| Edinburgh | 19.8% |
| Plymouth | 19.7% |
| Brighton | 18.6% |
| Sheffield | 17.2% |
| Cardiff | 15.4% |
| Newcastle | 13.8% |
| Norwich | 11.3% |
How much demand is there for hybrid work arrangements in 2024?
To find out more about the current demand for jobs with hybrid working models and its popularity in 2024, we used the tool Keyword Finder to analyse online searches surrounding the topic, and delved into Instagram hashtag data.
Our analysis revealed that:
- An average of 7,800 searches are made every month in the UK for ‘hybrid jobs’.
- This means that on average in the UK, someone searches online for this term once every 6 minutes!
- To date, 98,815 Instagram photos and videos have been posted with the hashtag #hybridwork. This ranges from content and statistics promoting the model, individual’s documenting their own hybrid working setups and workplaces and recruiters hiring for hybrid work opportunities.
Hybrid jobs popularity overtime in the UK
When did hybrid working become so sought after? And what sparked the surge in popularity for hybrid work arrangements? To find out, we delved into data from the search analysis tool, Google Trends, which revealed:
- People in the UK only started searching for ‘hybrid jobs’ online from around May 2020 onwards. This was just over a month after the first COVID19 lockdown was announced, as the government began instructing people to start working from home where possible.
- Lockdown officially ended in the UK in July 2021, but searches for jobs offering hybrid work arrangements continued to rise year on year.
- In fact, March 2024 saw more interest on Google Search for the term ‘hybrid jobs’ than ever before.
Google Trends data: Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term.
Remote vs office based jobs: which are most in demand?
The COVID-19 pandemic appeared to be a turning point for many workers’ attitudes towards remote and hybrid work. Fears of infection drove the initial shift, however, many then discovered unexpected benefits beyond just safety, leading more and more to seek out remote working opportunities.
To find out exactly when this shift took place, we again used Google Trends data, to assess the popularity of remote jobs vs office jobs overtime, which found:
- Up until the end of 2021, searches for office jobs had far more Google Search interest than those for remote opportunities.
- But in January 2022, searches for remote jobs took over those for office-based roles, and continued to increase every year since.
So what does the future of hybrid work look like for the UK workforce?
These statistics paint a clear picture: hybrid work is no longer a novelty, it’s a highly sought-after arrangement. With younger generations prioritising flexibility and a healthy work-life balance, and search trends reflecting a surge in demand, hybrid models seem poised to be a defining feature of the future workplace.
However, questions remain. Will businesses continue to adapt to accommodate these preferences? Might hybrid working arrangements soon be replaced by fully remote ones? One thing’s for sure: the UK workforce is evolving, and hybrid work is at the heart of this transformation.
At Archimedia Accounts, we are committed to helping small and growing businesses thrive. Having supported many businesses on their journey to success and running multiple businesses ourselves, we understand the daily challenges of growing a business. If you are looking for a business planning consultant who will go above and beyond to ensure your business starts off on the right foot, contact us today.
