Positive Trends for the Office Print Market

It’s been almost two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. While we’ve moved away from the near-apocalyptic setting of toilet paper being hoarded and kids having gym class in their backyards, we’re still feeling the effects of this global event. It’s important to see that there could be an end in sight for our socially distanced future—even if we’re not quite there yet.

Keypoint Intelligence recently conducted its Future of Office Printing Survey focused on respondents who work from home and are printing for work that included those who were working from home pre-pandemic, those working at home due to the pandemic, or those doing so because their office environment is slowly (but not yet fully) opening back up.

And while Europe is moving toward hybrid work environments quicker than the US, many American employees who are currently working remotely expect some sort of hybrid situation by 2022. Some additional points include:

• 56% of US respondents expect they will be hybrid by January 2022, while this is true for 58% of Europeans.
• 10% of Americans and 11% of Europeans expect they will be in the office full time.
• 5% and 8% of US and European respondents, respectively, are unsure of what their work setting will entail.
• The above do not include about 33% of US office workers and 48% of European office workers who are already mostly in the office.

Statistics from the Keypoint Intelligence 2021 Work from Home End-User Survey

While working from home or in a hybrid format can potentially give employees a better work/life balance, this growing trend could have a great effect on the print and supplies markets. With so many people working remote, the need for many output devices in an office will be lessened, not to mention the effect this will have on paper use and ink/toner. That said, this could also benefit many managed print service providers, who have the potential to use this information to streamline the (post-pandemic) offices of tomorrow.

Our Take

Even though all of this is a probability and not quite yet fact, the expectation is what we should be focusing on. The hybrid work environment will be a reality for years to come, for a lot of people—that’s not a bad thing, either. It has not only accelerated digitization in the workplace but highlighted the resiliency and elasticity of print, too.

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Mark DiMattei and John Shane contributed to this piece.