Hybrid working still isn't guaranteed in transactional finance — here's the current state of play
The assumption a lot of candidates still carry from 2021–2022 is that hybrid working is now a settled, permanent feature of office-based finance roles. It isn't, and the direction of travel in 2026 is genuinely the opposite: most companies now expect around three days a week in the office, with a growing number asking for four or five.
That matters for both sides of a hire. For candidates, it means treating a job advert's stated working pattern as a live negotiating point rather than an assumed baseline — the businesses still offering genuine hybrid flexibility are noticeably fewer than eighteen months ago, and they know it, which is exactly why it remains their strongest recruitment card.
For employers, it cuts the other way: if you're one of the businesses still able to offer two or three days from home, that's now a genuine competitive advantage in attracting the strongest candidate available, not just a nice-to-have on the advert. We see it directly in shortlist quality — a hybrid role for a Payroll Clerk or Credit Controller consistently pulls a stronger response than an equivalent office-based role at the same salary.
The trade-off employers weigh is real too, and it's worth being honest about it rather than assuming remote automatically wins: transactional finance work — reconciliations, payment runs, query resolution — often genuinely benefits from being physically near the rest of the team, especially for anyone early in their career who's still learning by watching how more experienced colleagues handle the harder queries. That's a legitimate reason some businesses are pulling attendance back up, not just a control instinct.
Where we see it land best in practice: hybrid for established team members who've already proven they can work independently, with more in-office time built into onboarding for anyone new to the role or the business — giving the judgement-based parts of the job (handling a difficult supplier call, a disputed invoice, an urgent payment run) the in-person support they genuinely benefit from, without treating attendance as one-size-fits-all across an entire team regardless of tenure.
Whichever side of this you're on, it's a live market factor worth pricing into any hire right now, not an assumption to make either way — talk to us about what's actually working for similar roles across the West Midlands before you finalise a job spec.