“Get back to work” – why the Work from Home vs Return to Office debate isn’t as easy as those calling for it may think
A 1950s attitude to 2025 work
I love hybrid work. There are things I do on my WFH days I can’t do from the office, and things I do on my office days I can’t do from home.
When I’m at home, I walk my dogs before work. I put on a wash while the kettle boils, often not speaking to anyone. I do the kind of work that needs quiet, and concentration, such as writing or editing. When I need to, I can join a Teams meeting or have a call with a manager or colleague.
When I’m in the office, I might speak to about five different people while I make a cuppa, and find out information I’d never find out when I was on a Teams call. I can, as I did this week, run an informal vision board workshop (fun!).
At home I get to walk into town at lunchtime, a market town in the Cotswolds. At work, I saunter/weave down London’s Oxford Street.
Working from home, I can answer the door to a delivery driver, or I can go to the gym as soon as I clock off (in London, I’ve tried a spin class after work before a later train, which I can’t do at home).
You get the picture: In each case, there’s a balance.
And that for me is the big word that needs to be brought into the work-from-home vs work-from-office debate that’s raging in the UK right now. I say in the UK because that’s where I’m based and that’s where I’m hearing all the noise.
If you are in another country and reading this, I’d LOVE to know the situation there so please do share in the comments. I know there are US companies such as Amazon demanding a return to office.
Whether we like it or not, the pandemic changed the way we work. We all worked remotely, and now companies are saying they want people back in the office.
A recent BBC Panorama programme shed light on the working from home debate. I felt the programme was more focused on the reasons why working in an office is preferable, with a lack of insight into how working from home can help productivity. But it served its purpose - to get us talking about the ‘return to work’.
In the Panorama, Lord Rose said that people working from home are ‘not doing proper work’. Productivity was suffering, he said, and we’ve regressed in our working practices. Read more here Working from home is 'not proper work', says ex-Asda boss - BBC News
Meanwhile in the Sunday Times newspaper, Lord Alan Sugar spoke about his feelings on return to work (do it or eff off elsewhere). The Apprentice starts again this week, so of course there are interviews. (As an aside, I LOVE the apprentice. And Dragon’s Den. I am obsessed with the chaos of The Apprentice, always have been. It’s corporate catnip to me).
It’s easy for some to say ‘return to the office’ but what are people returning to? Are offices fit for purpose? I think companies who demand people’s return should think carefully about what they are then offering. The old ‘ping pong table and pizza Fridays’ aren’t enough to demand your staff come back to work in the office full time.
Are there enough desks, the right set-ups, the right facilities? If you’re saying ‘get back to the office’ is the office good enough to lure people back?
Because if it isn’t, they may well vote with their feet.
I’ve been compiling my thoughts on it all as someone who now works hybrid, but who has worked full time in offices, full time from home, and a mixture, freelancing in other people’s offices on short term contracts. I’m also coming at this as a career coach who works with people on being happier at work, which connects directly with where and how you work and the pressure on you to be in a certain place (or not).
Here’s what I think:
Trust is a big part of this issue. I have a friend who said that they expect their staff to come in five days a week so they can see what they’re doing and that they don’t trust them to work from home. They’d be doing housework, or picking the kids up from school. I feel that if a manager or CEO can’t trust their staff, that is their issue not the staff’s issue. Surely you have recruited people you can trust?
There is a clear divide between workplaces and offices. I am intrigued by the use of language about getting ‘back to work’, making work synonymous with office. As if people have not been at work because they’ve been at home. Teachers have returned to schools, for example, or retail workers to their stores. But the idea that those who carry on working from home are not working is the crux of this - it’s about perceived productivity, as if being present means someone is then performing more, working harder, and so on.
As if those who come into offices don’t then take time in that office working day to do their own things, as they would at home. A scroll on social, that extra ten mins at lunch.
Presenteeism is a key part of the argument against returning to the office.
Just because you can see staff, it doesn’t mean they are working. And the demand to return to the office could fester and, in turn, find employees into working to rule.
I’ve worked in places where it was mandatory to have your screen on in Teams meetings – challenging if you have accessibility issues. It’s also very personal – why should the rest of the office see what my home looks like?
It’s work from the office vs work from home (not ‘work from the golf course’): in the Panorama they talked a lot about working from the golf course and this for me was super unhelpful. People who want flexible working don’t tend to do it because they want to play golf all morning. They do it because they want to be there for their children, to perhaps be able to manage conditions ranging from ADHD to Menopause.
Onboarding is a tricky part of the balance. In the past two years – post-pandemic – I have onboarded at two companies as a full time member of staff. One was a fully remote onboarding, with attendance in the office usually monthly, and the other was a hybrid, two days a week in an office, with my first two days aligning with the two in-office days.
Guess what? There was a noticeable difference in the two processes and how I settled in. Being able to shake hands, to say hello, to smile at humans not faces on a screen was very important. There was the thrill of being the new girl and heading into the office, thrill and nerves. Meeting my manager and senior managers in person on that first day laid a foundation I believe led to the success of the second role compared to the Teams-based alienation of the first.
Not everyone can work from home - should we return in solidarity? There are the people who work in retail, hospitality, driving trains or, as Lord Rose pointed out, Surgeons. Perhaps if he’d said ‘nurses’ he might have found himself coming across as a bit more understanding.
Yes, those people have to go to a place of work. And yes they may have families or caring responsibilities and ‘manage’. But that brings us back to the idea of the workplace fulfilling needs of those it demands be ‘in’.
I can imagine there are surgeons who miss bedtime, school pick up, who don’t have time for putting on a wash. They might, and I assume here, have staff to do stuff like the cleaning.
But the point is they have to go to work so why shouldn’t everyone?
Well, in that case, what does the world of the office now look like? What of the physical needs of staff you’re demanding come back to an office? Is the light acceptable? Are you giving them the right equipment? Is there food on offer?
It’s also about accessibility. By saying you want staff to come to the office full time you are making it harder for your teams to recruit people who have a phsycial or mental disability. And don’t forget, those who demand your staff come back to the office five days a week, that you need to then provide what staff need, be that access for wheelchairs or reasonable in-office adjustments for ADHD.
There are also the contract issues. If a member of staff joined in the pandemic and their contract states they can work remotely, if there is no clause saying that their contract could and might change, you can’t just say ‘I’ve decided we’re coming back in’. you’ve recrtuited that person on the basis that they can work remotely. Just as you can’t suddenly change the whole job, you can’t just flip the location.
The black and white of ‘office or home’ and ‘get back to work’ needs to shift. There needs to be fluidity. There need to be clear HR policies in place to support the people who are being asked to change the way they’ve worked for nearly 5 years now.
Hybrid is the answer for me for so many reasons – for work/life balance, for mental health, and for productivity. It’s a trust exercise and hybrid affords that by saying ‘let’s keep in touch but also pls have time and flexibility to do your own thing and have a life around work’. I think it says that the company values people and trusts them.
Companies are also vastly restricting their recruitment possibilities by demanding a full return to the office. With remote or hybrid, you can have staff who live on the other side of the country or even in another country producing amazing work for you, bringing insight and skills to the table.
There needs to be a shift in leadership mindset
There also needs to be a shift in the mindset of the leaders who are making these demands but not having to follow through on them themselves. Leaders who might say their staff have to come in, but then aren’t visible in the office, or have a separate office away from the main team, 90s style. If you want staff to be accountable and present, then as the boss I think you need to be accountable and present, too.
Mental health can suffer in both scenarios and it needs to be a focus for any company, wherever their staff are based.
I’m not writing this as someone new to the world of work. I’ve had office-based jobs, worked as a freelancer from home, from co-working spaces and from offices on contracts, as well as working in roles that had a set place of work, for example, bars, restaurants, call centres, switchboards and factories.
I would say that during the pandemic, my mental health suffered when I was WFH full-time because I thrive around people. I think it’s partly my job that means I do, too – as a journalist when I started out we needed to all be in the office to talk about stories. We’d crowd around a computer to see the news or to read something important.
That was a long time ago, though. There was no social media, no teams, no remote work. And as a journalist, being office-based was quite fluid, too. You see, because of the ‘no social media’ or even internet on each computer, we had to go out to get stories. We knocked on doors and we went to interview people in person, sometimes taking a whole day to get to somewhere remote. We had to get up a lot, to either talk to the picture desk or on local newspaper days I went to reception when someone came in with a story. I would go out in a shared ‘pool car’ to farms and allotments and council meetings, or court, notepad in hand. Being office-based didn’t mean sitting in rows at computers tapping away, our only interaction online.
For me, hybrid is the sweet spot, my happy place. I know it won’t work for all industries but those saying ‘get back to the office or work elsewhere’ might find they are recruiting for new staff - and struggling to secure them - with a 1950s attitude to working in 2025.
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I love this, Jenny. It is a really important issue.
My view is a typical HR answer "it depends". And it does - it depends on the needs and wants of the employee, as well as the needs and wants of the employer. There is no (nor should there be) one-size-fits-all answer. Every employer should be open to a variety of options as that will also enable them to have the widest variety of employees and pool of potential job candidates.
Much of it comes down to training managers a) to trust people (as your article says) and b) how to manage people and build teams and relationships both remotely and in person - and a mixture of both.