Why Not All U.K. Businesses Will Do What Lord Sugar Tells Them

What do billionaire businessman Lord Alan Sugar, the director-general of the CBI, Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, and business secretary Alok Sharma have in common? They’re all urging the U.K. government to get workers back to the office and breathe life into cities beleaguered by the pandemic.

Yet research by Cardiff University and The University of Southampton published in August 2020 revealed 88% of employees who worked from home during lockdown would like to continue in some capacity, with 47% wanting to do so often or all of the time. 

And those with little previous experience of homeworking have not been put off the experience by lockdown: 50% of new remote workers would like to keep doing it often or always, even when COVID-19 restrictions permit a return to ‘normal’ working. 

A recent BBC survey found that 24 out of 50 of the U.K.’s biggest employers have no plans to return all staff to the office full-time in the near future. Likewise, some smaller businesses are abandoning their offices altogether in favour of inhabiting the digital workplace full time.

Learning platform Valamis has 250 employees globally, with a U.K. office in London’s Canary Wharf. The team is currently 100% remote, with no fixed plans to return to the office. Katy Peters, its global head of marketing, explains: “What we do will be completely dependent on country demands, but also whether individuals feel comfortable. People are balancing childcare, schools reopening or not, and all the perils brought to the forefront in 2020, so we need to give our employees the benefit of flexibility.”

Peters says the ideal scenario would be to give people the option of where to work, and, if they do commute to the office, those dates should be coordinated with colleagues for the purpose of meeting in person.

‘The financial savings have been a lifeline’

Edward Poland, co-founder of venue booking site Hire Space, says the financial savings of a reduced office headcount have been a lifeline. “Our staff of 25 has been fully remote since March and we managed to get out of our office lease in July, saving us around £50k. To say events has been hit hard by the pandemic would be an understatement.”

Poland has been pleased with how his team has adapted to the new setup. “They’ve exceeded anticipated productivity levels, internal communication has been effective, and regular in-person meetings in small groups have helped maintain our strong culture. We may return to a hybrid approach in 2021, when we’ll lease a smaller space, but we’ll never go back to having the whole staff work full-time from an office. Why would we? Remote working makes us far more nimble, plus we can hire from anywhere in the UK.”

Dmitry Bagrov, managing director at global software engineering firm DataArt UK which hires 3,000 people in 20 locations in the US, Europe, and Latin America, says the return to office will be up to everyone to decide. He explains: “Some of our employees here in London have already started to come to the office at least a couple of days a week. They find an office environment more inspiring, and understandably so. Some people–the ones with kids mostly–still cannot afford that luxury because schools have only just opened. 

“I don’t care where they work, as long as they do. It’s high time we started to treat our employees as adults. I’ve always believed that an employee who wants to work will continue to work no matter the circumstances, and an employee who doesn’t want to work will always find a way to slack off, be it in an office or at home. I genuinely don’t care where my team works from. I hire grown-ups and I trust them to do the work irrespective of their location.”

How to make the ‘new normal’ work for more businesses

But what about those small businesses–the coffee shops and eateries that serve commuters and lunching office crowds–that depend on urban footfall to survive? Gareth Jones, founder of co-working and startup support community Town Sq, believes that a wider adoption of local co-working spaces would give those small businesses the footfall needed to thrive while letting employees cut out the commute.

Jones explains: “These spaces are designed for work, but they exist in local communities. They not only give people an environment in which to be productive, but they can help level-up our local economies by placing people in front of other businesses that rely on their trade. Yet, rather than commuting into the city, people can walk to work, or enjoy a far shorter commute, giving them the lifestyle freedoms they have enjoyed whilst working from home.”

And those freedoms are all-too alluring. Jones adds: “We have all enjoyed being able to wake up later, be home from work earlier and be present for those family meals or bedtime stories that in February we were spending in a car or on a train. It seems foolish, perhaps almost Orwellian, to travel 60+ minutes a day to do the same thing from a cubicle that we can do from home, just to appear more productive.”

It’s a sentiment that has chimed with the Welsh government which, earlier this month, stated a long-term ambition to see around 30% of Welsh workers doing their jobs from home or close to home, even after the threat of COVID-19 lessens.

The intention is to develop a hybrid workplace model, where staff can work in the office, at home, or in a hub location to help reduce traffic congestion and pollution and improve the work-life balance for employees and employers.