For 2026, three companies in ten planned to require staff in the office five days a week, according to a ResumeBuilder.com survey published on 8 October 2025. Yet Eurostat data updated on 30 October 2026 show that working from home is not receding in Europe. Remote work at a small business is therefore a real recruiting argument against large companies, on one condition: it has to be organised, with rules, routines and secure tools.
Key points
- In the ResumeBuilder.com survey of 978 business leaders, 30% of companies planned to require five office days a week in 2026, up from 28% in 2025. Only 10% would still let employees choose to work fully remotely.
- Small companies are moving the other way: according to the Flex Index, 70% of US companies with fewer than 500 employees offer full flexibility, compared with 12% of those with more than 25,000.
- In the European Union, 23% of employed people worked from home at least sometimes in 2025, compared with 14.4% in 2019 (Eurostat).
- A study published in Nature found that a hybrid schedule cuts resignations by a third, with no effect on performance reviews or promotions.
- Remote work only holds up when it is organised: written rules, team meetings, trained managers, secure access, telephony and shared documents.
What is happening
ResumeBuilder.com, a US résumé-writing site, commissioned an online survey of 978 managers and executives in October 2025. All of them worked at companies with more than ten employees that had switched to remote work during the pandemic. The direction is clear: in 2026, 30% of these companies planned to require five office days a week, and 17% four days. The share letting employees choose fully remote work would fall to 10%, and fully remote companies would stay at 2%.
The main reasons given are company culture (64% of those increasing office days) and productivity (62%). 8% admit they are doing it to push employees to quit. The survey also points to a paradox: only 16% of the leaders surveyed think five days in the office should be the standard.
This shift mostly concerns large organisations. The Flex Index, which tracks the policies of nearly 9,000 US companies, measured it in its second-quarter 2025 report, published on 20 May 2025: 70% of companies with more than 25,000 employees set required office days, while 70% of companies with fewer than 500 employees offer full flexibility, meaning fully remote work or employee choice. Only 12% of the largest companies do the same.
In Europe, the underlying trend is not reversing. According to Eurostat, 8.8% of employed people aged 15 to 64 usually worked from home in 2025, and 14.2% sometimes. In total, 23% did so at least occasionally, compared with 14.4% in 2019 and roughly the same level as in 2024.
What remote work at a small business changes for hiring
A small business can rarely match the salaries of a large group. What it can offer is what many large companies are taking away: flexibility over where and how people work. For a candidate who spends two hours a day commuting, or who has to fit a job around family life, that is a concrete argument.
The effects are not just a feeling. In 2024, Nicholas Bloom and his co-authors published in Nature a six-month randomised controlled trial with 1,612 employees of a Chinese technology company: with two days a week working from home, job satisfaction rose and resignations fell by a third, with no measured effect on performance reviews or on promotions over the following two years. In a small team, every departure is expensive: recruiting, training, and the know-how that walks out of the door.
But poorly prepared remote work produces the opposite of what you hope for: information that does not flow, files sent through personal messaging apps, customer calls forwarded to private phones, managers who no longer know who is doing what. That is often where business owners' distrust comes from. The problem is then not the place of work, but the organisation and the tools.
What I have learned
I work remotely myself, and often on the move. My tools and data are not scattered across a dozen services: they sit on my own server, reachable only through an encrypted connection (VPN). That is how I run my ERP, my documents and my agents from my computer or my phone, wherever I am. I described this setup in claudeVPS. What makes it reliable is not goodwill: it is that there is only one place to find information, and only one door to get in.
I have applied the same principles for others. In 2010, I designed and installed the infrastructure of an asset management firm, AtonRa Partners: servers, email, IP telephony, remote access through VPN and remote desktop, with security policies for remote work. That project taught me that technology is not enough: we had to train the teams, document the procedures and support people as they changed their habits. Remote access that nobody knows how to use, or that everyone works around, is useless.
What to do in practice
1. Write down your remote work rules
One page is enough: who can work remotely and in which roles, how many days, the hours when everyone must be reachable, the shared office days, and what happens when something goes wrong. A written rule avoids case-by-case arrangements, which quickly create unfairness.
2. Set team routines
A short check-in at the start of the week, a shared office day for what works better together, and a single place where decisions are written down. Remotely, what is not written down does not exist for those who were not there.
3. Prepare your managers to lead remotely
Leading a team you cannot see means judging results, not presence, and keeping a regular conversation with each person. It is a skill that can be learned: see also my article on manager engagement.
4. Open secure access to your tools
Your staff need to reach the company's software and files without copying them onto personal devices. That means encrypted access, two-factor authentication and up-to-date devices. The remote access appliance itself must be monitored: I explain why in company VPNs.
5. Equip telephony and shared documents
Telephony that follows the employee, on their computer or work phone, with the company's number. Documents in a shared space, with a single version of each file. Customers should see no difference between an employee at the office and one at home.
6. Say it in your job ads
If you offer remote work, state it clearly: the number of days, how flexible the hours are, the equipment provided. It is often the first thing candidates look for, and something a large group can no longer promise.
Frequently asked questions
Is remote work suitable for every role?
No. A workshop, a building site or a reception desk require people on site. But many small businesses have mixed roles: administration, accounting, customer follow-up or preparing quotes can partly be done remotely. Start with the roles where it is obvious.
How do I keep control without monitoring people?
By setting clear objectives and looking at results, not login hours. Written rules, a regular check-in and a single place to track tasks give more visibility than a camera left on.
Does it take a big IT budget?
Not necessarily. The essentials come down to a few building blocks: secure access, suitable telephony, a shared document space and up-to-date devices. What matters most is choosing them according to your real needs, and training the team to use them.
Going further
If you want to make remote work a hiring advantage without losing control, I can help you set the rules and the organisation (Strategy & advisory) and install the tools (Systems & infrastructure). The easiest way to talk it through: a 20-minute call.
Sources
- 3 in 10 Companies Will Eliminate Remote Work by 2026, ResumeBuilder.com, 8 October 2025 (accessed 10 November 2026).
- Flex Report Q2 2025, Flex Index, 20 May 2025 (PDF).
- Employed persons working from home (lfsa_ehomp), Eurostat, updated 30 October 2026.
- Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance, Nicholas Bloom, Ruobing Han and James Liang, Nature, 12 June 2024.
Photo: Michelangelo Buonarroti / Pexels (pexels.com).
Tags: remote work, small business, hiring, organisation, remote access, infrastructure