There was a song, originating in 1919, the main line of which was, ignoring the vernacular, ‘How are you going to keep them down on the farm now that they’ve seen Paris?’ The theme is obvious. Just to show there is nothing new in the world, including email marketing, data suggests that employees regard the availability of flexible working as important as salary.
The suggestion that post Covid, working conditions would revert to how they were before lockdowns might well be wrong. You would, presumably, have retained all the personal data regarding the subscribers to email marketing lists from that time in the sure and certain hope at it would become useful again. That’s an error.
Approximately half of employees who have been working remotely or hybrid suggest they would look elsewhere if they were forced back into their office full-time. Yet some big companies have stated they 
are ordering their employees to return to their offices full-time, this despite all the studies showing that they are happier and notably more productive when working from home. Many remote workers fear the threat of just such an order.
This affects us in email marketing.
It is probable that when remote working began to be more or less the norm, those on your B2B list rendered much of your data worthless. Many suggest they found opening times varied to a substantial degree, with subscribers being at the computer during what would previously have been commuting times.
The report suggests it’s unlikely we will revert to the old levels of office working. If this is true, then we have an added task, or more. We need to identify those who are working from home, those who are on hybrid hours and those back to the office. It can be done via split-testing.
Each of those three working states will have indicators, not only opening times. Employees at home might be more willing to open marketing email as there will be nobody around looking over their shoulders. You could consider changing the content of emails to take this into account. Let’s accept it; things are different now and likely to remain so.
