Vocabulary:

1. Hybrid - made by combining two or more different things

2. Confidence - a belief that one can trust or rely on a person or thing; a belief in one's own abilities or skills

3. Productivity - the amount of work that a person, company, etc. does compared with how much time, money, and effort it takes them

4. Trend - the general way in which something is changing or developing

5. Signal - an indication of a situation, condition, etc.

ARTICLE: 

While many people have gotten used to hybrid work, a survey by Microsoft has found that most bosses are worried their staff aren't working hard enough when they're away from the office.

Eighty-five percent of bosses said that hybrid work — that's sometimes working from the office and sometimes working remotely — has decreased their confidence in their employees' productivity.

But employees reported very different feelings — 87% said they are productive at work.

Microsoft surveyed 20,000 workers in 11 countries about their productivity, and also looked at trends in productivity signals, such as meetings and messages, and data from LinkedIn and Glint, an employee management platform owned by Microsoft.

The company said that the number of meetings per week for the average user of its video call app, Microsoft Teams, had increased by 153% between the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and March 2022.

But information like this hasn't stopped bosses from worrying.

Microsoft calls it "productivity paranoia" and says companies should stop worrying about whether people are working enough and help them "focus on the work that's most important."

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the BBC that companies need to find a solution to this problem because the world of work is unlikely to return to the way it was before the pandemic.

However, Ryan Roslansky, the boss of LinkedIn, which is also owned by Microsoft, told the BBC that while the number of remote jobs on LinkedIn increased during the pandemic, this had fallen to around 15% in September 2022, down from 20% earlier in the year.

Before the pandemic, just 2% of jobs on LinkedIn included remote work, according to Roslansky.