Is working from home really destroying Britain? No, it’s not

“But these employers are not able to actually provide evidence that their bottom line has been impacted, or that their productivity has been impacted at all.”

Is work from home destroying Britain?

Though most of Britain’s workers cannot work from home – it is a luxury mostly afforded to desk workers – millions of people now work at least some of their week out of the office. More than a quarter of working adults in Britain (28%) are hybrid working, the Office for National Statistics estimates, compared with 13% who are entirely remote and 44% commuting every day.

But some companies – including Amazon, Boots and JP Morgan – are now asking staff to return to the office full-time. Indeed, in one of his last moves as Asda chairman, Lord Rose ordered his staff to come back in a minimum of three days. 

“I believe that productivity is less good if you work from home,” he told Panorama on Sunday (19 January) night. “I believe that your personal development suffers, that you’re not going to develop as well as you might if you’ve been in the workplace as long as I have.”

“I think lastly, there is a connection, a correlation, yet to be proven no doubt, between the current state of mental health of particularly young people and the number of people who are working away from a workplace. I think it’s bad.”

The previous Tory government favoured this narrative, too. In 2022, Jacob Rees-Mogg famously left “sorry you were out when I visited” notes on the desks of civil servants. The right-wing Telegraph magazine has published dozens of anti-work from home pieces – including, recently, one blaming slack WFH Nottinghamshire council staff for the “severe mismanagement” of flooding (the evidence cited was one ‘hybrid work job advert’). 

But what does the evidence say? 

“Most of the research comes out in favour of letting people work remotely, at least some of the time,” Florrison said. 

According to an International Workplace Group (IWG) survey conducted last year, three-quarters of those who work flexibly found they felt less burnout than when they spent their whole week in the office. Some 86% said the increase in the amount of free time they had from no longer having to travel to work every day improved their work/life balance. 

Of course, not everyone cares about free time. For example, a short biography of Lord Rose on Asda’s website says: “Stuart appears to have no hobbies apart from work and has a dog called Bruce.”

But even on productivity measures, working from home wins out. The IWG survey also found that about three in four hybrid workers felt they were more productive (74%) and more motivated (76%) because of splitting their week, while 85% said it had improved their job satisfaction.

“I think it’s really unhelpful, this anti-work from home narrative, because it is kind of setting up employers against workers. And actually a lot of employers and a lot of managers themselves work flexibly,” Florrison said. 

Work from home is not perfect: and Lord Rose is right, it can sometimes drive negative mental health effects. Fully remote workers have reported feelings of loneliness and isolation; one Nuffield Health study found that some 80% of Brits feel working from home has had a negative impact on their mental health. But this study was – crucially – released just three months into the Covid-19 pandemic, when heightened levels of stress were par-for-the-course.

Overall, more recent data presents a positive – if complex – picture of what mental health looks like for flexible workers. 

A 2023 study by University of Pittsburgh suggests that flexible work lowers depression rates while 2022 ONS data shows that almost half of those who worked from home in some capacity reported that it improved wellbeing (47%).

Work from home also makes the world of work more inclusive, data suggests. Employees with disabilities or caring responsibilities no longer find themselves automatically locked out of certain jobs, for example. 

“There’s this old way of working the nine to five every single day, maybe working extra hours, and that definitely worked for some people, people that were used to that way of working. But I think we really mustn’t forget that that way of working excluded lots of people,” Florisson said.

“For example, we know from our research that disabled workers find that working from home allows them to better manage their condition. It’s got all sorts of positive effects on their physical and mental health. For example, if you don’t have to commute every single day, it’s particularly helpful for people with mobility issues, people with pain or energy conditions.”

Unions have long pointed out the gender inequities of traditional work patterns. 

Lack of flexible work currently locks too many women out of work, especially mothers and carers, and is a factor in the gender pay gap,” said UNISON national officer for equalities Josie Irwin.

“More opportunities for working flexibly means women would be able to take on more paid work.” 

Where does Labour stand on working from home?

The Labour government has promised to entrench flexible working rights, making it a “day-one” privilege where reasonable. Some protections are included in the Employment Rights Bill, currently making its way through parliament. 

The bill attracted sustained backlash in the right wing press: The Daily Mail called the plans a “WFH charter for idlers” while The Times asked whether it was “shirking from home”.

But culture wars aside, employers who fail to offer flexible working – or who try and shirk Labour’s new legal protections – risk losing workers. 

Last year, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that about four million people have changed careers because of a lack of flexibility at work

“I think it’d be very difficult to claw back the WFH changes that have been made,” said Florrison. 

“I don’t think we will ever go back to a pre pandemic kind of state. And some businesses that are going quite hard in on this, they will be shooting themselves in the foot – because people will leave and find work elsewhere.”

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