The pandemic undoubtedly changed how we do our jobs, with lockdowns prompting a huge rise in remote and hybrid work.
It was a welcome shift for many, but in the years that have followed, companies have started to roll back on changes and get employees back into the office.
According to recent research from the ONS, just 14% of UK staff are fully remote in 2024, while 26% combine travelling in and working from home.
This is compared to figures from 2020, when 46.6% of employees did at least part of their job from home.
Jim Moore, employee relations expert at HR consultancy Hamilton Nash, previously told Metro.co.uk that bosses were keen to get teams back to their desks as they feel it ‘improves collaboration and learning’, while others hold ‘the paranoid belief that people working from home are inherently less productive.’
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of Manchester United, is among the vocal proponents of this viewpoint, and last month ordered club staff to either return to the office full-time or resign.
Elon Musk has also called working from home ‘morally wrong’, and Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, told staff last month their roles were ‘probably not going to work out’ unless they came in ‘at least three days a week.’
However, despite talking the talk about the importance of in-office work, it seems bosses (at least for the most part) aren’t prepared to walk the walk.
A survey of more than 500 chief executives by the International Workplace Group found that 93% have adopted flexible working patterns, with only 7% working from a central office location five days a week.
Avoiding a long commute was the main reason for the move towards this approach, according to the research, although the majority (62%) of business leaders split their time between a central office, local flexible workspace or office, and home.
It’s not just the C-suite either.
The most likely group to WFH or have a flexible hybrid routine are those earning £50,000 a year or more, with just 20% of this demographic expected to be in the office full-time compared to 64% for those with a salary below £30,000.
Essentially, the higher you go up the career ladder, the more freedom you have to dictate your own working environment.
A whopping 74% of the bosses who took part in the IWG research claimed bringing staff back to the office full-time wasn’t a priority, and the vast majority reported a range of benefits since adopting a hybrid model in their companies.
Three quarters of respondents said company culture had improved, along with similar numbers who’d seen improvements in employee engagement, collaboration and retention.
Additionally, over 70% agreed that hybrid work has enabled them to attract the best talent and offer roles to a more diverse range of candidates.
Mark Dixon, CEO at International Workplace Group commented: ‘The uptake of hybrid working is continuing to increase as companies of all sizes understand its importance in creating an optimal environment for both the productivity of the business and the happiness of its employees to thrive.
‘Furthermore, this latest research convincingly demonstrates that CEOs appreciate the critical role that hybrid working has in not only attracting, but retaining the highest quality talent.’
Unfortunately for many staff, though, that’s not the reality in the companies they work for, as evidenced by a KPMG poll of 1,300 chief executives which revealed 63% of UK leaders predict a full return to in-office working by 2026 and 83% believe financial rewards and promotion opportunities could be linked in future to office attendance.
Jon Holt, chief executive of KPMG in the UK, said a ‘one-size fits all approach’ to back-to-office mandates could ‘create tensions between leaders and employers’.
And this is certainly the case if management aren’t leading by example.
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