It seems we are moving yet another step closer to a culture in which working from home has become standard practise. Indeed Labour now has a phrase for what we would once have regarded as the norm. It describes the five-day week as the ‘culture of presenteeism’ and a senior cabinet minister has said it must be ended. Do you agree?
The minister in question is Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary. He believes that giving staff an automatic right to flexible working will make them more “productive and loyal”. By ‘flexible’ he means employees having the right to work from home or ignore work emails and calls in the evening. That, he said, will make them more “motivated and resilient”.
Indeed Mr Reynolds has taken a little swipe at Amazon for trying to force their staff back to working five days a week. He said letting staff work from home was good for both companies and staff and the practice could help “revive low-productivity, low-growth Britain”.
It’s quite a contrast with his Tory processor Jacob Rees-Mogg. You may recall him wandering around his empty offices at the time when the Covid crisis was coming to an end leaving notes on desks left vacant by civil servants who had chosen to stay at home. The notes read: “Sorry you were out when I visited... I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon!"
That did not make him popular with the civil servants’ union the FDA. Its boss Dave Penman said the minister’s note was crass and insulting, and undermined civil service leadership. Now Mr Rees-Mogg’s successor in the Department for Business has joined in the assault. He said it was “bizarre” that he had launched a “war on people working from home”.
So what is the government expected to propose in the Employment Rights Bill which will be unveiled in a few weeks? It will essentially give the seal of approval to what we now call WFH or, if you prefer, “flexible working and a right to switch off”. Good employers, Reynolds says, understand that their workforce need to be “motivated and resilient” and they need to judge people on “outcomes and not a culture of presenteeism”.
The UK is already the work-from-home capital of Europe. According to the Office for National Statistics, nearly half of all employees work remotely at least part of the time. Last year more than a quarter were doing so full-time. Occupancy rates in offices are roughly half what they were before the pandemic struck.
Reynolds says there is no reason for anyone to object to working from home as long as it is managed well. “We’ve had flexible working laws for quite some time in the UK. I think where people reach agreement with their employer … it does contribute to productivity, it does contribute to their resilience, their ability to stay working for an employer.” He added: “The UK has very significant regional inequality. It could play a significant contribution to tackling that.”
Apart from making flexible working a default right the new law is expected to ban “exploitative” zero-hours contracts. It would also give people the right to sick leave, maternity pay and the right to sue for unfair dismissal from day one of their employment, rather than after a longer period. As for the minimum wage, it should be increased in order to guarantee “a decent quality of life”.
Sir Keir Starmer says it all adds up to the biggest overhaul of workers’ rights in a generation. The Tories say it proves that Labour is still a party that is in hock to the trade unions. Mr Reynolds says that is a “cliched Seventies line” and employers have nothing to fear from the reforms.
So that’s the political scene. What is happening out there in the real world of work and how might we all respond to WFH if we have the opportunity?
Amazon is one of many companies trying to end the WFH phenomenon. It has told its 1.5 million employees have been told they must return to work in the office five days a week from the start of next year. The company’s bosses make it clear that they believe having office managers, engineers and coders on site, as well as their warehouse workers, is better for collaboration, brainstorming, learning and company culture.
But what about the workers?
Clearly it depends on what sort of job you have and whether or not it can be done sitting in front of a computer in your living room. If it can be, says Alice Thomson in the Times, remote working is seen as a gift. Or at least it is for more senior workers, particularly those with families and pets.
She writes: “They can do school drop-offs and dog walks, save time and money on their commute, ditch the work shirts and make-up, put on a wash in their lunch hour and be in for the Amazon delivery. They don’t get distracted by toxic office gossip or younger colleagues’ questions and have enough self-discipline to keep up with their work commitments if they happen to extend their summer beach holiday.”
But it’s a different story for young people: “They have the most to lose from this office exodus. Nearly half of Gen Z still live in the family home, while many others rent cramped, shared accommodation; they won’t have their own home offices or garden sheds. The under-30s are the most likely to say they feel lonely, depressed and demoralised by lack of in-person interaction with work colleagues.”
The Office for National Statistics says the UK is already the work-from-home capital of Europe, with 44 per cent of employees working remotely at least part of the time and 16 per cent working from home full-time last year. Occupancy rates in offices are consequently at roughly half pre-pandemic levels.
Thomson writes: “I’ve lost count of the number of my children’s friends who apply for internships, graduate schemes and entry-level jobs, only to discover that they will rarely meet their new teams but must operate mainly from home.”
She quotes Jessica, who is 25 and works for an insurance company to whom she feels no loyalty: “It’s infantilising. I’m stuck with my parents in a cul-de-sac in Guildford, having lunch with my retired dad, staring at my childhood wallpaper, answering queries from colleagues I have barely met. I’d love to commute regularly but there are no desks for us in the office.”
And then there’s another young woman she met in a coffee shop. She is a Treasury civil servant but instead of being in the office she was “expertly managing a Teams call while Snapchatting her friends about plans and flicking through TikTok.” She had landed the Treasury job after leaving Leeds University with a first in maths and physics two years ago.
But is she happy? On the contrary. Here’s what she told Thomson: “I’m quitting. I’m frustrated and bored, I haven’t learnt anything or met anyone in London, I’m not allowed in the office often enough. I’ve barely worn my new suit and the rent on my damp room is astronomical.”
The Times is not entirely hostile to the concept. In its leader it accepts that WFH worked well enough on the whole to save the country from economic collapse at the start of the pandemic: “Some people enjoyed the flexibility and not commuting. More work was done than might have been imagined. But… the result for many was a suboptimal working environment and isolation… and it has “obvious and serious drawbacks”.
“First it is far from proven either that productivity will rise or even match what can be done in the office — the figures are inconclusive — or that WFH improves morale and job satisfaction. Secondly, it is not the role of government to tell employers what working conditions would best suit their staff, other than to prevent abuse. In some cases it would be useful to offer home working to qualified staff unable to take the job without the option of flexible working. In others, it would destroy continuity and teamwork. Most importantly, companies dependent on ideas, creativity and innovation would suffer. Ideas flourish when bandied around informally, in conversation or group discussions.”
The problem is, says the Times, that “entitlement to work from home takes no account of the temptation to misuse time that is being paid for by an employer… The appalling failure at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in Swansea to clear the backlog of licence applications in the aftermath of Covid shows the deleterious effects of leaving a large team directionless and left to their own devices at home.”
So where do you stand – or, perhaps, sit?
If you are already spending a substantial amount of time working from home are you happier than when you had to make the daily commute to an office? Do you miss the company of colleagues and the feedback? And do you believe you are as productive? Or less?
And if you are not allowed to work from home does that make you resentful or possibly relieved?
And what if you are a boss and have several staff working from home? Do you believe they are pulling their weight or is it causing you problems?
And if you are a client of the organisation are you aware of any difference?
Do let us know.
