In the USA, the office is back. From Washington to Wall Street, companies are pulling employees back to physical workspaces. Tech giants like Dell and Amazon, alongside media powerhouses, are drawing a hard line: in-person work is non-negotiable. The KPMG CEO Outlook reveals a stark truth: two-thirds of global leaders expect full in-office operations by 2026.
Europe tells a different story - at least for now. Three-fourths of Dutch, Irish, and Finnish companies and over half of businesses in Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, France, and other countries partially or fully work from home. Europeans put a greater emphasis on work-life balance than their overseas counterparts and tune in to employees’ desire for flexibility. Still, companies on the continent aren’t completely impervious to the global shift, with nearshoring leaders adapting fast through satellite offices.
Is this strategy effective? What drives this shift, and what implications does it have for businesses and team augmentation providers? We take a closer look at that.
Offshore development centers (ODCs) took off in the early 2000s, providing dedicated physical spaces where augmented teams worked exclusively for external clients. Soon, nearshoring companies like ours followed suit, offering this model as part of their comprehensive client solutions.
These strategic hubs merge the benefits of augmented teams with in-office advantages: enhanced productivity, collaboration, and supervision. This winning combination – affordable global talent plus in-office work guarantees – became crucial when back-to-office mandates emerged.
Even though Europe isn't mirroring the US return-to-office pace, it is still moving away from full remote work. In the UK, 41% of companies have implemented hybrid policies requiring 2-3 office days weekly, with 9% mandating full in-office presence. The Benelux region leads office re-entry, with 70-80% office attendance and plans for even more compulsory office days by 2030. Even Scandinavia, known for flexible work cultures, is reinforcing hybrid models. This shift suggests remote work is losing its privileged status.
On the surface, this could spell trouble for nearshoring providers traditionally operating virtually, with experts mostly working from home. As clients push return-to-office policies, they might favour local suppliers who can attend in-person meetings or offer hybrid support. The office transition will also disrupt existing workflows; not all distributed teams have braced themselves for this shift.
Except for those that have.
Agile nearshoring companies like ours have always supported clients who need in-office presence. While many of our clients prefer fully remote, some have wanted office setups from the start. With flexibility embedded into our services, we can accommodate all work modes, including those that require satellite offices. These dedicated spaces let our augmented teams work alongside core customer teams in other countries. The goal? To combine the best remote and on-site work for those needing more than just remote.
For team augmentation companies like ours, offering clients flexible work setups - whether fully remote, hybrid, or traditional in-office teams - has always been the success factor. So when workplace trends started shifting again towards stationary and hybrid work, we were already equipped to account for them. This isn't some massive overhaul for us - we're simply leaning into capabilities we've had all along.
And what do we mean by adapting? Here’s a breakdown of a few essential tactics that help us accommodate any customer request.
When more customers started asking for office-based teams, we were already set up to deliver. For years, we have been building on some of our strongest talent pools in Central and Eastern Europe, rolling out offices in strategic spots like Krakow (Poland), Lviv (Ukraine), and Sofia (Bulgaria). Each site offers the flexibility to dedicate workspace tailored to specific client needs. Take our Krakow office, for example - it serves as the digital hub for our TUI team, featuring fully branded office areas and conference rooms designed around their identity.
Besides the tech teams working for our clients, we also have local operations, talent acquisition, and support teams on the ground—ensuring smooth day-to-day collaboration, faster onboarding, and a strong connection between clients and their extended teams.
👁️ Sneak peek: Check how our augmented tech teams build their unique advantage in each of the strategic nearshoring countries. 📍Visit Poland. 📍Visit Ukraine. 📍Visit Bulgaria.
This flexibility to work from a branded space comes with a set of advantages. Our teams feel like they're genuinely part of the client's company, with a clear understanding of their role and reporting structure. Clients, meanwhile, get the sense these are essentially their teams - building trust, with the only twist being that we fully handle the admin side of things (see the details below).
And the geographical setup is a turning point. For most European clients, our offices are just a quick 2-3 hour trip away, often by low-cost airlines. Proximity enables regular in-person meetups, which help our teams click and customer managers build trust.
The added value of augmented teamsOffice-based teams that feel like yours, just easier? Experience-based nearshoring like ours offers precisely that.
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The above components of satellite nearshoring teams help companies draw on remote work strengths while keeping the collaborative feel of an in-office team. But we’ve found they’re not enough.
In today’s disconnected world, human connection matters more than ever, especially as AI steps into the spotlight. Collective research backs this up. Connected teams show 13–25% higher output than disengaged ones, and employees who feel engaged with their workplace report 81% less absenteeism. Even more striking, disengagement can drive turnover rates to 18-43%. Those numbers are massive, and as a company that thrives on collective power, we’re all in on building genuine connections and team spirit.
Teambuilding efforts in our X factor that keep our nearshoring specialists close to our customers’ teams, goals, and values. We hold various activities and events, including hackathons and tech conferences, that spark community and get team members to share knowledge across colleagues, teams, and our regional tech hubs. These events include:
We’re all going through a strategic workplace shift, with companies balancing the return to office and remote work models. As Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, succinctly put it: "We're not talking about going back to pre-pandemic norms. We're talking about a new way of working that balances flexibility with purposeful collaboration."
While some, mostly US-based, organisations are rather rigid about their RTO policies, others like Dropbox, Zapier, Salesforce, Spotify, or HubSpot nurture a more flexible approach. Instead of risking mass employee pushback, they turn towards hybrid work, with some prioritising virtual desktop models. For them, the key is to create adaptable work environments that blend remote advantages with collaborative potential - and partner with innovative nearshoring providers who can help make this transition seamless. Are you ready to join them?