In Philly, the hybrid-work wars aren’t over yet. Battles wage beyond City Hall.

Early this year, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker announced that the City of Philadelphia would require its workers to return to the office five days a week.

The policy change was meant to improve public services, increase a sense of safety in Center City, and convince private-sector employers to bring their workers back to the office and downtown Philadelphia full time.

Hybrid work accommodations have become less widely available over the last two years, and employees of major firms are worried that the days of work-from-home flexibility are dying out.

One Comcast employee said there are fears about a five-day in-office mandate because of Parker’s policy. “Once the city went to five days, there was definitely a panic in Comcast because the city relies pretty heavily on the business Comcast employees bring in.” When asked for comment, Comcast said, “We do not have plans to go to five days a week.”

The Comcast employee and other office workers who spoke with The Inquirer are not named in this article because of their concern about job security.

Based on interviews with a dozen office workers and managers in Philadelphia and its collar counties, the work-from-home debate is far from settled. U.S. Census Bureau data showed the ranks of remote workers — defined as those who work at least partially from home — in Philadelphia shrinking from 19.4% in 2022 to 16.2% in 2023.

“What we’ve seen over the last 18 months is a slow but increasingly decided move back to full-time in the office,” said Milton Corsey, director of human capital solutions at AchieveNEXT, a Wayne-based HR consultancy that works with dozens of companies in the region. “The trend has been clear. Ultimately, the goal is a return back to pre-pandemic for a lot of places.”

Throughout President Joe Biden’s administration, employers have acted cautiously because of a tight labor market that empowered workers who could more easily find a new job.

A hybrid option is still a strong incentive companies can use to secure talent. At the same time, managers and owners like to work from home, too. In many industries, norms may have simply changed too much since 2020 to require full-time in-office employment.

“You’re seeing this battle between the employee and the employer,” said Sarah McDaniel, employee benefits executive at AssuredPartners, an insurance broker that works with hundreds of local employers. “We don’t know if [hybrid work is fully] reversible. At the end of the day, the employer has to remain competitive and get the best talent.”

After the COVID-19 vaccines debuted in early 2021, many office-based employers eased into return-to-office policies and maintained a hybrid work schedule. Three days in and two days at home proved a popular model, which also allowed employers signing new leases to seek smaller but more expensive and higher-quality office space.

Starting in 2023, major employers like Comcast and health insurer Independence Blue Cross began requiring more days in the office. The trend continued into 2024, and local public-sector employers like SEPTA and Parker’s administration joined the trend of a more intensive in-office policy.

Office boosters say that trend is still gaining momentum.

“The mayor showed a great deal of courage by bringing people back to the office five days a week, and we’re seeing more and more companies do that,” said Jerry Sweeney, CEO of Brandywine Realty Trust, the region’s dominant owner of office buildings.

In the early days of return-to-office policies, Mondays and Fridays were the most common work-from-home days, while in-office time was typically in the middle of the week.

But now, “in our inventory, the traffic we’re seeing on Monday in our offices is much higher than it was on Tuesdays a year ago,” Sweeney said. “We’re kind of working our way back.”

The European business software company SAP, with almost 3,000 workers in the Philadelphia area, is an example of this recent trend. It offered greater hybrid flexibility than most other companies before the pandemic, but in early 2024, it instituted a three-day in-office policy.

SAP is also an example of the nuances of return-to-office policies. The pushback to three days a week was immediate, as employees felt betrayed by a company that had long allowed more remote work. The company granted flexibility within the mandate, specifically for workers hired before or during the pandemic or who live more than 40 miles from the office in Newtown Square, Delaware County.

According to an SAP spokesperson, the company offers temporary exceptions to the in-office requirements for both business and personal reasons. A similar exception process will be available (but not guaranteed) for any new hires or those planning to move farther than 40 miles from Newtown Square. No further alterations of the hybrid policy are are planned.

“A lot of people don’t have managers in the same office as them, so there’s no one policing it,” said one SAP employee. “They haven’t gotten strict yet about checking to make sure who’s in and who’s not.”

Workers at other companies agree that implementing in-office policies is more nuanced than employers admit. Mandates issued thus far are often riddled with exceptions, with much dependent on individual managers and some workers allowed to maintain full-time remote work if given special dispensation.

Some industries, such as finance, have returned full-time, while others, like tech and law, have been more likely to stick with hybrid schedules. Fridays in the skyscraper canyons of Center City or on office-lined Swedesford Road in Wayne still feel like a pre-pandemic Saturday.

“I haven’t seen any [policies] that are actually ironclad,” said McDaniel of AssuredPartners. “I’ve not heard of any company locally or regionally that’s put out a firm, blanket policy that isn’t being adjusted as needed to keep good talent.”

Heading into 2025, some office market observers see that changing.

The historically tight job market has been showing signs of fraying, weakening workers’ bargaining power. In 2020 many business leaders hoped remote work would boost employee productivity, and it may have done so for a time, but federal government data show that was a fairly short-lived phenomenon — and employers are doubting whether sitting at home actually allows their staffs to accomplish more.

Corsey at AchieveNEXT says some clients are considering ending hybrid work as customers complain about poor service from home-based workers.

Office-minded employers have supporters in President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of the incoming administration. Both are remote-work foes planning a new push to bring federal workers back to the office full-time.

“With the election, there’s this promise of the return to the norm and pushing from the highest levels of government to encourage that to happen,” McDaniel said.

Some Philadelphia-area office workers do not believe that their employers’ current hybrid work policies are set in stone either.

At a recent IBX company town hall, managers told employees that they are not looking to change the current Tuesday-through-Thursday in-office regimen, but workers there said they saw the statement as a temporary stance, not a permanent guarantee.

“I am worried they will mandate a five-day RTO, especially given that the city has a five-day in-office policy,” one IBX worker said. “For 2025, I could comfortably guess that they will not change the policy. For 2026 and on, though, I am not so sure.”

Employers who have been lenient about their return-to-office policies are beginning to crack down. Workers at Comcast reported that badge swipes are checked more assiduously and that lenient managers are being forced to get tougher.

Much depends on the job market. The Philadelphia-area unemployment rate is still at a historically low 3.6%, but many of the employees interviewed felt they would have a tough time finding an equivalent job.

That could embolden employers to further roll back hybrid work.

“The winds shifted in the past year or two. It’s more of an employer’s market at this point,” said one Vanguard employee. “I feel like [Vanguard leaders] know there would be a lot of pushback, but the job market is changing, so hopefully they don’t take advantage of that.”

This story has been updated with information from SAP.