As Instagram employees join the millions of workers who were slapped with a return-to-office mandate in 2025, remote work is fast becoming a status symbol.
Sander van ’t Noordende, the global CEO of Randstad, which places around half a million workers in jobs every week, says the great return-to-office war is effectively over—and a new pecking order has emerged.
While rank-and-file staff are dragged back to their desks, the CEO of the world’s biggest talent company says only star performers will be able to cling on to fully remote roles.
“You have to be very special to be able to demand a 100% remote job,” van ’t Noordende tells Fortune. “That’s increasingly the story. You have to have very special technology skills or some expertise.”
“The whole phenomenon of freelance work has been coming up, of course, over the last decades… but that also requires also special skills—good commercial skills or networking skills, which not everybody has.”
For everyone else, there’s no escaping at least some office time. But contrary to the hardline mandates from the likes of Amazon and JPMorgan, van ’t Noordende doesn’t think we’re going back to old-school 9-to-5, five days a week as the norm.
Instead, he says a happy medium is here to stay: “The pendulum is starting to slow down… The equilibrium seems to have been found,” van ’t Noordende says, adding that with the exception of some banks in big cities, “it’s generally a hybrid model, around three to four days, plus some work from home.”
Research has already labelled this phenomenon the ‘hybrid hierarchy’
What van ’t Noordende is seeing on the ground mirrors exactly what Korn Ferry predicted at the start of this year: As firms increasingly upped the dial on in-office working, the consulting firm forecasted a “new hybrid hierarchy” where flexibility becomes a perk reserved only for star performers.
“2025’s Haves and Have-Nots will be divided not by economics, but by talent and how much the company wants them,” the report outlined.
Essentially at the top, workers with scarce skills can still negotiate for fully remote or ultra-flexible setups. But at the bottom, workers with the least leverage—often in more junior or commoditized roles—are more likely to be expected to show face.
It’s not entirely new. Korn Ferry wrote in the report that unique hybrid arrangements have historically always been dished out “only to top brass” talent—and while the special treatment could create friction within workplaces, it added that it’s no different from offering new talent higher wages than “longtime, lower-compensated employees.”
At some companies, high performers are already being offered flexible schedules as a bonus for their good work. At the same time, those performing in the mid-range don’t get the privilege of remote work, the Wall Street Journal reported.
And now, with hiring slowing and pay increases stalling, flexibility is one of the few levers employers have left to attract and keep people they really don’t want to lose.
