Is Working From Home Still Working?
During Covid, working from home kept businesses alive. Laptops migrated to kitchen tables, bedrooms became boardrooms, and nobody questioned whether joining a meeting beside a laundry basket was normal.
But the emergency is over. So why are we still arguing about where everyone should be?
A client who runs a small insurer recently visited his head office and found just four people at their desks. The business employs more than 1,000 people, with around 70 based at headquarters. The missing 66 were working—but elsewhere.
He wants them back. Unsurprisingly, they are not rushing to return.
The Great Office Tug-of-War
Barclays has reportedly faced fierce resistance after asking employees to increase office attendance from two days a week to three. Thousands apparently support exemptions for people living more than 40 minutes away, along with financial help for extra commuting costs.
Compared with employers such as JP Morgan, Boots and Amazon, which require five office days, Barclays hardly sounds tyrannical. Yet return-to-office policies are rarely simple.
Many employees built their lives around arrangements made during Covid. One journalist I know accepted a job on the verbal understanding that she would attend once a week. As the main carer for two young children, remote working enables her to reach nursery before closing time.
Another employee lives two and a half hours from the office and has resisted pressure to attend more often.
Their position is understandable. But so is the frustration of colleagues who must appear three days a week while others remain mostly remote. Nothing energises workplace resentment quite like the suspicion that someone else has a better deal.
Remote Work May Have a Career Price
There may also be a hidden cost to staying home.
Research from King’s College London suggests that frequent remote working can reduce promotion prospects, particularly for fathers and employees without children. Working from home once or twice a week appears relatively harmless; the penalty becomes more pronounced at three or four days.
Flexible work, then, may be wonderfully convenient right up until someone else gets promoted.
Meanwhile, employees have stronger rights to request flexibility, and employers must explain refusals. That is valuable protection—but it raises an interesting question: how firm are people about remote working when applying for a job rather than trying to preserve one?
The Labour Market Has Changed
In some sectors, vacancies have fallen, unemployment has risen relative to available roles, and some jobseekers are sending thousands of applications without success.
AI is adding further pressure as employers ask which jobs can be automated or completed more efficiently. In that environment, how many candidates would reject an otherwise attractive position because it required three office days?
That does not make flexibility unimportant. For carers, parents and people with health conditions, it can determine whether employment is possible at all. But “I need flexibility to work” is different from “I prefer not to commute on Tuesdays.”
Productivity Isn’t the Whole Story
The evidence connecting location with productivity remains mixed. Some repetitive or semi-automated tasks may be completed more efficiently at home. Creative, collaborative work is less straightforward.
A developer can code at home. A journalist can write at home. An insurance worker can process claims at home. But a business is not merely a collection of isolated people completing tasks.
Teams learn through casual conversations. They exchange half-formed ideas, solve unexpected problems and build relationships. Those things are difficult to schedule—and even harder to recreate in a video call titled “Informal Collaboration Session.”
Flexibility Must Also Feel Fair
Occasional flexibility is easy to understand: a sick child, a broken boiler or a medical appointment.
The challenge comes when hundreds of employees each negotiate a personalised working week. One attends on Mondays and Wednesdays. Another avoids Fridays. A third appears only when Mercury is in retrograde.
Each arrangement may be reasonable on its own. Together, they can become a managerial jigsaw puzzle with several pieces missing.
Flexibility works best when it helps both employees and the organisation. When it becomes an individual entitlement, fairness (and team cohesion) can suffer.
So, Who Decides?
My client’s concern is not that the other 66 employees are lounging in their pyjamas. They are working. His concern is that he is trying to grow a business in a difficult industry and believes people produce something valuable by being together.
Perhaps he is wrong. Perhaps the same ideas would emerge from 66 separate kitchen tables.
But flexible working should help people and businesses perform better. It should not become a proxy war over who controls the seating plan. The workplace has changed. Employers must adapt.
Employees may have to adapt, too.
