What Irish Employers Need To Know About Remote & Hybrid Work From IBEC’s 2025 HR Trends Report
As the year draws to a close and strategies for the new year are being finalised, it is an important time to take stock of this year’s workplace developments and understand the state of remote work in Ireland and what it means for your business and people in 2026.
Ireland’s largest lobby and business representative group have recently released their annual HR Trends report for 2025 and it provides us with some great data and insight to do just that.
The story this year (despite the headlines) is not a dramatic swing back to the office but rather one of stabilisation and clear signals for employers, employees, and policymakers that the future of work is already here and employers need support to transition and compete.
Here are our key takeaways from IBEC’s HR Trends 2025 data, and what they mean for building a thriving remote and hybrid team.
The quick headlines 🎯
- Most employers are not planning to increase office days. IBEC’s sample shows a clear majority holding steady rather than turning the RTO dial up.
63% of employers are not planning to increase on-site time. - Transition to remote or hybrid remains a key talent attraction and retention tool with many companies finding it harder to hire for on-site roles.
46% of employers say it’s easier to attract & retain talent for hybrid or flexible jobs - Since the Work Life Balance Act began in March 2024, companies have already or are starting to report increases in flexible or remote work requests.
24% of employers have seen increased requests for flexible or remote work.
+ All of this is underscored by the fact that Leadership Development is the #1 talent management priority for employers with 14% naming it as their #1 and 44% have it in their top 3 priorities.
What do these mean for your business?
1) Your competitors are moving away from where work is done and instead focusing on how to thrive remotely for a competitive advantage.
Despite a flurry of media headlines with a spotlight on big brand changes to flexible work policies (that were hybrid not remote) the majority of employers in Ireland (63%) of employers are NOT actively considering increasing the time spent on site by employees (vs 53% in 2024) while 16% are considering it for only some roles (vs 15% in 2024) and 9% are considering it for all roles.
The number of employers not actively considering increasing the time spent in the office has increased by +10% year on year.
When it comes to how employers are implementing hybrid, the percentage of staff working remotely to some extent remains largely stable with just under a third of employees working at least 3 days on site a week (31% in 2025 and 31% in 2024) as the most popular policy with 2 days a week in the office now at 18%.
The same can be seen for fully remote with 13% of companies reporting that they support fully remote for certain roles which is down 1% from 14% in 2024.
What does this mean for your business?
The companies (could be your competitors) that have already transitioned to fully remote or are now stable with their hybrid operating models (majority of which are 3 or 2 days a week in the office) are now building on a platform of stability and are focused on HOW work is done in order to thrive rather than debating where work is done. If we look at this from a competitive point of view it means they have or will be close to cracking it. Bringing some external indicators into this conversation the Flex Index 2025 Q3 defines that 👇
“Fully Flexible firms outperform mandate-driven peers – Joint BCG research shows Fully Flexible companies grew revenues 1.7x faster than mandate-driven firms from 2019–2024. Even adjusting for industry and size, the growth advantage remains: growth rates 34% higher than peer companies. Flexibility directly impacts business performance.”
2) Hybrid Is Here to Stay but Execution and Compliance Is the Challenge
The data from this year’s report also gives us a reality check and one that we encourage you to be aware of. Defining a policy and implementing it are two different challenges of remote!
Compliance with hybrid work policies (such as two or three days a week in the office) is really low with only 16% of companies are reporting 100% compliance even though that is up from just 10% in 2024.
In total over 60% of employers estimate that their staff are less than 100% compliant with the hybrid policy they have “implemented”.
However, employers have unlocked that vs last year one of the most effective ways employers can increase compliance is not via mandates but instead though
- Direct consultation with staff
- Design of team collaboration days
- Investing in intentional connections & gatherings
What does this mean for your business?
Hybrid maturity now depends less on policy design and more on how it is implemented. Many organisations have the right frameworks on paper but are losing traction in practice because team leaders haven’t been equipped to make hybrid work work. The lesson from this year’s data is clear: compliance follows confidence. Businesses that invest in manager capability, feedback loops, and intentional design of how work is done are seeing better engagement and smoother coordination than those relying on mandates alone. For your business, that means shifting energy from writing policies to empowering people through manager training, intentional design of work and a focus on how work is done regardless of location.
If you don’t get it right – your competitors who do will be better equipped to attract and retain talent because 46% of employers say it’s easier to attract & retain talent for hybrid or flexible jobs!
3) The Work Life Balance Act Is Starting to Shift Behaviour
Since the Work Life Balance Act came into effect in March 2024, companies are beginning to feel its early ripple effects. So far, a total of 24% of employers have reported an increase or new requests for flexible or remote work arrangements, a small but meaningful signal that awareness and legislation is turning into action.
At the same time, the majority of businesses (72%) say they haven’t yet seen a noticeable change which makes sense in year one. Policy change tends to move slower than cultural change. The first wave is often those who are already seeking change, those who need it the most and employees testing new workplace options.
Employer Example 1:
A large Irish tech firm recently shared that after implementing its formal process for flexible work requests, uptake was initially low but within six months, the number of approved hybrid or remote arrangements had doubled. Once staff saw it working well amongst their peers, confidence grew quickly on both the employer and employee side.
Employer Example 2:
A regional services company found that requests weren’t just about remote work. Many staff wanted compressed weeks or partial home days to balance care responsibilities, a reminder that flexibility comes in many forms, not just location and that the Right To Request addresses all of them.
What does this mean for your business?
This is the moment to get ahead of the curve. Even if you’re not yet seeing a surge in requests, a quarter of your workforce may do so even if things just simply stay the same!
How you respond will shape your culture and retention over the next few years. The best prepared organisations aren’t waiting for volume; they’re preparing to support their people and meet their compliance responsibilities. That means having a clear strategy, manager guidance, and open communication channels in place that make flexible work requests easier to navigate and less reactive.
If you treat the Work Life Balance Act as an opportunity rather than an obligation, you’ll be building trust, reducing turnover, and positioning your business as an employer of choice in Ireland’s evolving world of work.
Supporting this idea, the 2025 Employee Experience in Ireland study from Great Place to Work confirms what we’ve been seeing at Grow Remote for years through our partnerships with leading remote companies: when trust leads, success follows.
Published in June 2025 and conducted across thousands of employees in Ireland – the report outlines a clear correlation between trust, flexibility, and high performance. Among companies that are certified as Great Places to Work 59% of employees work in a hybrid model
When it comes to certification of Ireland’s Best Workplaces, 49% of employees work hybrid and 16% are fully remote!
The Leadership Moment
All of this is underscored by one consistent theme: leadership capability is now firmly a defining factor in whether where and how people thrive in their work. Leadership Development ranks as the #1 talent management priority, with 14% of employers naming it as their top focus and 44% placing it in their top three.
As hybrid work stabilises and flexibility becomes a permanent feature, the differentiator is no longer policy, technology, or pay it’s how well leaders build trust, connection, and accountability across distributed teams. The best managers today are learning to empower rather than control, build culture regardless of location, drive performance and measure success by outcomes, not presence.
Ireland’s workplaces are invested in remote and hybrid. The question is no longer where people work, but how work is done and how they’re led. The businesses that win the next phase of work will be those that equip their managers to lead their teams with intentionality and purpose wherever their people sit.
At Grow Remote, we help organisations make that shift
Our leadership and manager training programmes give teams the tools and confidence to lead remote and hybrid work effectively
Explore how Grow Remote can support your business in 2026 👇
https://growremote.ie/leading-remote-teams-2025/
