Working from home:
you can’t turn back time

By Robin Williams
1 September 2020

Last week, the government told people to go back to the office or risk losing their job.  

It was a bad miscalculation. As an employment lawyer, I was shocked to see a government essentially threatening the workforce. As a voter, I was bemused that a Tory government should consider it appropriate to step into an area that is the proper preserve of business.

Intriguingly, there was a deafening silence from business. As one commentator put it, “You can bet your life that if employers really wanted their staff back in the office, they’d be marching them there at gunpoint!”

Of course, what the government really wanted was to revive the inner city economies dependent on office worker trade that have been devastated by lockdown, to try to turn the clock back to pre-lockdown, to recreate the ‘old normal’. I suspect their supporters in the property business have been applying pressure too.

Unfortunately for them, and for inner city retail businesses, neither employers nor employees seem prepared to engage reverse gear. A majority of the public believe it’s not the government’s job to tell employers how to manage their business. Indeed, the only demographic that did sympathise by a reasonable margin were those over pension age!

Thus it seems many employers reckon it is in their interests, as well as those of their employees who are able to work from home, to do so for at least part, if not all, of the working week.

Poll after poll shows that employees are enjoying a better quality of life without any reduction in productivity.  And this is important; in my experience, a large proportion of grievances against employers involve staff seeking a better work/life balance, with the majority of employers traditionally unwilling to accommodate part time or flexible working unless a tribunal claim is threatened.  

Now we have had an enforced experiment, a six month period where people have had to work from home and, barring a few initial teething problems when lockdown suddenly occurred, it actually works!  Hours salvaged from long commutes equates to more time to spend with family and results in a happier and healthier workforce, not to mention the financial savings from not having to buy a season ticket or a work wardrobe.

Some lament the ‘death’ of city centres, claiming that they are turning into ghost towns. In my view, this is simply a redistribution of trade, unfortunate for those who lose, but beneficial for those who are now better off. Many people have reported that their high streets are coming back to life. Instead of people spending their cash at a Pret near Euston Station, they are spending their money at a café in their local community.  Money will still be spent, just in a different place.

I reckon the days of being tethered to an office are pretty much gone.