UK Bosses Try To Turn Back Clock On Hybrid Working

As UK workers face a tougher-than-usual January return to offices, many large employers, including Amazon, BT, PwC, and Santander, are enforcing stricter in-person attendance mandates. The Guardian reports: As of 1 January, BT is requiring its 50,000 office-based employees across the UK and several other countries to attend three days a week in what it calls a 'three together, two wherever' approach. Workers at the telecoms company have been told that office entry and exit data will be used to monitor attendance. The accountancy firm PwC is also clamping down on remote working; the Spanish-owned bank Santander is formalizing attendance requirements for its 10,000 UK staff; the digital bank Starling has ordered staff back to the office more regularly; and the supermarket chain Asda has made a three-day office week compulsory for thousands of workers at its Leeds and Leicester sites. The international picture is similar.

Multiple studies suggest that the future of work is flexible, with time split between the office and home or another location, in what has been called 'the new normal' by the Office for National Statistics. The ONS found in its latest survey that hybrid was the standard pattern for more than a quarter (28%) of working adults in Great Britain in autumn 2024. At the same time, working entirely remotely had fallen since 2021, it found. One of the most frequently reported business reasons for hybrid working was 'improved staff wellbeing,' the ONS found, while those who worked from home saved an average of 56 minutes each day by dodging the commute.

UK staff have been slower to return to their desks after the pandemic than their counterparts in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the US. London, in particular, has lagged behind other global cities including Paris and New York, according to recent research from the Centre for Cities thinktank, where workers spent on average 2.7 days a week in the office, attendance levels similar to Toronto and Sydney. It cited the cost, and average length of the commute in and around the UK capital as one of the main reasons for the trend. Despite this, there has been a 'slow but steady increase in both attendance and desk use' in British offices, according to AWA, which tracked a 4% rise in attendance, from 29% to 33%, between July 2022 and September 2024. 'Hybrid working is here, it's not going away,' said Andrew Mawson, the founder of Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA), a workplace transformation consultancy. 'Even though companies are trying to mandate, foolishly in my view, to have their people in the office on a certain number of days, the true reality of it is different.'

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