I posted 50 more big ideas for L&D on Wednesday morning. By the afternoon, the latest research from Stanford and the Hoover Institution landed in my inbox.

I wasn’t expecting vindication. But here we are.

The Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes has been running monthly since 2020. With over 200,000 observations, the May 2026 update confirms what most L&D functions have not yet built into their thinking: hybrid working is not a phase. It settled in 2023 and has barely moved since.

The US workforce has divided into three. Six in ten people fully on site, one in four hybrid, one in eight fully remote. And access to flexibility is not evenly distributed. Graduate-educated workers in finance and tech work remotely on nearly a third of their paid days. Those without degrees, in retail, hospitality, and manufacturing: under a fifth.

Those are not the same workforce. They do not have the same access to time, space, or conditions for development. Most L&D functions are still designing as though they do.

The 50 more big ideas I published are built on one premise: stop designing L&D for an organisation that no longer exists. The workplace has changed shape permanently and the function needs to follow it.

The data didn’t surprise me, but the timing – on the same day – was useful confirmation.