The great divide: are office workers more productive than those at home?
Four years ago when the world of work was upended by the Covid pandemic, confident predictions were made that a permanent shift in remote working would follow the removal of lockdown restrictions.Much has clearly changed since.Some of the earliest preachers of the brave new teleworking world – including the US tech companies Google and Microsoft – are among the most vocal to repent.This week Amazon joined their ranks, handing down an edict to corporate employees demanding they return to the office five days a week, effective from 2 January.The chief executive, Andy Jassy, argues there are “significant” advantages to face-to-face working.
Others, including Goldman Sachs, Boots and Barclays, agree, as growing numbers of companies push to limit remote working.At Tesla, Elon Musk has a typically outspoken approach, telling staff unwilling to return to the office full-time they can “pretend to work elsewhere”.However, it is also clear the pre-pandemic working landscape will never be entirely rebuilt.After the initial push to return employees to the office after lockdown, flexible practices and the balance of power between bosses and workers is back on the agenda as the new Labour government promises a radical redrawing of employment rights.Expected within weeks, the plans include make flexible working the default option for workers from day one on the job.
Since the last lockdown ended three years ago, most employers have introduced some form of mandatory in-office work requirement.However, research by VirginMedia O2 suggests only a minority – four in 10 firms – demand staff are at their desks five days a week.Over time, this figure could rise, with a KPMG survey of UK chief executives published on Wednesday reporting that 83% believe there will be a return to pre-pandemic ways of working within the next three years, up from 64% a year ago.Even so, many bosses reckon a “one-size-fits-all” approach remains inappropriate, acknowledging that in the right circumstances, hybrid and flexible working arrangements are valuable tools.Even Amazon knows this, with remote work still allowed with management approval.
The firm also offers a four-day working week and flexible contracts in its warehouses.Utilisation of remote work will naturally differ across occupations.For factory workers and train drivers, there isn’t much choice; whereas in IT and professional services, take-up is often split along generational lines, or determined by career stage, living arrangements, and caring responsibilities.Research shows generation Z workers, early in their careers, are more likely to commute to the office.One often overlooked fact is that home-based workers are in the minority in Britain, and always have been – even at the height of the pandemic, when the level peaked at 49% of all working adults in the first half of 2020.
Threatening to further atomise an already inequality-strewn workforce, official figures show workers in the highest income bands, with degree-level qualifications, and in professional occupations were most likely to work from home.London residents reported the highest levels.At the height of the pandemic more than 70% of all staff in the borough of Richmond upon Thames worked from home at some point in 2020, the highest rate in the country, compared with less than 14% in some northern English towns, including Burnley and Middlesbrough.Another growing rift is between workers at British companies and in the public sector, where hybrid working is more established, and those with owners based abroad who are pushing for in-person interaction.Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs, for example, require staff to attend the office full-time, mirroring policies in place for US colleagues.
Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionViews on the pros and cons can be stubbornly held, as demonstrated by the status of WFH as a culture war front under the previous Conservative government, when Jacob Rees-Mogg passive-aggressively left notes on the desks of absent civil servants.Highlighting how utilisation can depend on management preferences, Nationwide under its former boss, Joe Garner, launched a “work from anywhere” policy in 2021 – only for his successor, Debbie Crosbie, to scrap it last year.Economists are divided on the benefits for productivity.Goldman Sachs has highlighted academic studies over the past decade ranging from an impact of -19% to +13%.Working from home means cutting out commuting, which can benefit mental health, and could mean fewer distractions – but not always.
Co-location can bring productivity benefits, helped by the sharing of ideas, grounded in research dating back to the Victorian economist Alfred Marshall, who studied the clustering of Lancashire cotton mills, and John Maynard Keynes’s idea of the “industrial district”.In the 21st century, however, new technologies had been pushing ahead with remote-working practices long before the Covid pandemic: the lockdown WFH boom only accelerated a shift that was already under way.Some studies have found that hybrid workers are just as productive as full-time workers, are less likely to quit, and can help companies save money on office costs.The latest surveys from the Office for National Statistics show more than 20% of businesses use, or intend to use, increased home working as a permanent model, a share that has been steadily rising over time.“We therefore doubt the Amazon announcement will be the start of a trend,” says Matthew Pointon, an economist at the consultancy Capital Economics.
“Indeed, moving to a full-time office model would not even be possible for firms that have already downsized their office space, such as HSBC and Clifford Chance,”
Farage claims he received official advice not to hold constituency surgeries
Nigel Farage has said he received official parliamentary advice against holding in-person surgeries for his constituents – though his claim was immediately called into question by insiders.On Thursday the Reform UK leader, who became the MP for Clacton in Essex in July, said he had been advised not to hold the physical weekly meetings that are a staple for most MPs, citing fears the public would “flow through the door with knives in their pockets”.He recalled the murder of the Conservative MP David Amess at a surgery in Essex three years ago.Farage said he had been given guidance by “the [Commons] speaker’s office, and beneath the speaker’s office there is a security team who give advice and say you should do some things and not do others”.However, a source told the Guardian this was not advice that the office of the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, or the security team would give to any MP as it would interfere with their democratic duties
European court rejects Paterson appeal over report into improper lobbying
The European court of human rights has dismissed an appeal by the former MP Owen Paterson against the parliamentary report that preceded his political downfall.Paterson, a former environment secretary and influential pro-Brexit Conservative, resigned as an MP in 2021 after an investigation by the parliamentary commissioner for standards established that he had repeatedly engaged in improper lobbying.The investigation began in 2019 after the Guardian reported that Paterson had lobbied ministers and officials, asking them to take steps that would benefit two companies that were paying him to be their consultant.Two years later the commissioner, Kathryn Stone, found that Paterson had made 14 approaches to ministers and officials. A committee of MPs recommended he be suspended from the House of Commons for 30 days over the “egregious” breach of lobbying rules
With a lust for freebies and hobbled by infighting, Labour look like the Tories 2.0 | John Crace
During the last election campaign it was hard to escape the impression that, whatever his other faults, Rishi Sunak just wasn’t very good at politics. The charge sheet included getting drenched announcing the election and leaving D-day veterans on the beaches. And insisting that black was white: that he was stopping the boats, that the economy was in good shape, that the Tories were on course for victory.Just a couple of months later, it very much feels like Keir Starmer and Labour are saying: “Hold my beer.” Keen to prove that they, too, are amateurs at the political PR game
Starmer’s free tickets for Arsenal and Taylor Swift part of job, says minister
Keir Starmer’s attendance at Arsenal football matches and Taylor Swift concerts is “part of the job”, the business secretary has said.Jonathan Reynolds described the occasions for which Starmer had accepted tickets, including a Coldplay gig and football matches, as “major cultural, sporting events”.The minister said he had “no problem” with politicians accepting gifts that can be of “a more personal nature” and noted hard-working politicians were entitled to “a bit of relaxation”.Starmer has accepted almost 40 sets of free tickets during his time as Labour leader, mostly to football matches but also £4,000 of hospitality at a Taylor Swift concert and £698-worth of Coldplay tickets in Manchester.He has also come under fire for the number of gifts accepted from Waheed Alli, who paid for work clothing worth £12,000, accommodation valued at more than £20,000 and glasses valued at £2,485
Labour will lean into hope at first conference in power for 15 years
When Ellie Reeves opens Labour conference, she will be the first Labour minister to do so since Harriet Harman walked off the stage in Brighton 15 years ago. For the 20,000 Labour supporters flocking to Liverpool this year, it is in many ways the first chance at a victory party.In No 10, there is a dilemma about how much ministers can use that sense of celebration – with a story to drive home about the dire state of Labour’s inheritance and amid a background of weeks of turmoil over winter fuel allowance, donations and the prime minister’s chief of staff.But those close to Keir Starmer say he will use this moment to lean into a sense of hope about what a Labour government can do – and to spell out the tangible change that he expects to deliver in the country over the next five years.The message will be how effective and serious government can be a “reckoning for populism”
Rachel Reeves to replace No 11 paintings with art of or by women
Rachel Reeves has announced plans to replace every painting in the lavish state room at No 11 Downing Street with artworks of or by women.Speaking at a reception for female business leaders on Wednesday evening, the chancellor said she wanted to mark the lives of the “amazing women who have gone before us”.Addressing the all-female gathering, she said: “This is King James behind me, but next week the artwork in this room is going to change.“Every picture in this room is either going to be of a woman or by a woman – and we’re also going to have a statue in this room of Millicent Fawcett, who did so much for the rights of women.”King James II, who is posing in a suit of armour, with a lustrous head of shoulder-length hair, is likely to be relegated to a storage room
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