By William J. Furney
With more major corporations calling their staff back to the office following years of pandemic-induced working from home, governments are now weighing in on the issue, and signalling it may not be the best for productivity.
British chancellor (finance minister) Rachel Reeves thinks more gets done when workers are all in the same place. “I am all for being flexible and making sure that people can be able to balance work and family life, but I do think that productivity gains are more likely to happen when you have that sharing of ideas and bringing that together,” she said in an interview on LBC radio on Monday.
Reeves cited her experience as the country’s relatively new chancellor following the Labour Party’s landslide victory in July, saying her office had been more productive with everyone in the same office, not joining video calls from remote locations.
Companies such as Amazon, Apple, Meta and Goldman Sachs have either ditched working from home or scaled back a hybrid model that allows people to work from home some days but show up to the office on others. Many employees have been reluctant to give up their home-centred working arrangements brought about by the covid-19 pandemic, with some organizing petitions and others flatly refusing to make the trek back to the office.
Following pushback from staff after finance multinational JPMorgan ended its work-from-home policy last year, CEO Jamie Dimon suggested that those who refused to go back to the office might look for work elsewhere.
“I am all for being flexible and making sure that people can be able to balance work and family life,” he said, “but I do think that productivity gains are more likely to happen when you have that sharing of ideas and bringing that together.”
British business minister Jonathan Reynolds has said it doesn’t matter where employees are as long as they get their work done. “If we want to address this low-productivity low-growth Britain … let’s judge people by what they do, by their output, not … whether they’re sat at a desk,” he said on LBC radio last week.
A survey conducted earlier this year found that most people who work from home, or 80 percent, watch television during working hours.
“The pandemic completely transformed the UK’s relationship with the workplace, with home offices becoming the norm for many Brits,” said Stuart Deavall of the company that commissioned the poll, printing supplier TonerGiant.
“However, working from the comfort of your home can come with its own distractions, particularly when … watching TV,” he said.
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