The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the working styles of companies all over the world. Many of them initially left office buildings to decrease human contact and prevent the spread of the virus. Some of those practices have seemingly become a permanent legacy of the pandemic. Turkish private lender Akbank joined that list Thursday when it announced a new working model that covers the post-pandemic era and features three different working practices: remote work, hybrid work and office work.

According to a statement, working conditions in the new period were designed in those three different ways, with the hybrid model featuring a more flexible work system. It generally provides more control to employees on how and where to work.

Accordingly, the Akbank branches that provide one-on-one and face-to-face services to customers will continue to work from offices while 52% of the headquarters teams will work remotely, 36% will work in a hybrid layout and 12% will work from the office.

Akbank General Manager Hakan Binbaşgil said in the statement that within the scope of this new approach, they "will find the opportunity to reach different audiences, such as those who prefer to work in different time zones or prefer part-time work."

"I believe that this approach will lead new initiatives in our country in creating employment," he added.

The increase in home office practices worldwide let firms explore further into the new setup.

Chris Herd, the founder and CEO of the FirstbaseHQ, an all-in-one provisioning platform that lets companies supply and manage all the physical equipment remote workers need, said in a recent statement on Twitter that over 2,000 companies over the last 12 months have shared their plans for remote work going forward and that the "companies will cut their commercial office space by 50%-70%."

He said some 30% of the companies he talked to "are getting rid of the office entirely and going remote."

He added that one of the reasons they are going remote-first "is because it lets them be more cost-efficient."

The issue of expenses that emerge while working from home is another subject that has been on the agendas of some countries that took steps to enable companies to compensate employees for working-from-home-costs. Comparethemarket.com recently calculated expenditures such as broadband or utility costs that could stack up throughout a month for employees in different countries and found that Turkey was one of the cheapest places to work from home while Barbados and Spain were among the most expensive countries.