Back to the office or WFH forever?

Millions of us are now making the great migration back to the office, at least for part of the week. Almost all of the UK’s 50 largest companies are not planning on bringing employees back full-time and, in some cases, the outlook is stormy. While the Government is keen to have civil servants back in Whitehall for at least three days a week, they’re likely to face opposition from unions, and this week, one unnamed Cabinet minister suggested civil servants should have their pay docked if they continue to WFH. Meanwhile, there’s a clear divide between white and blue-collar industries: flexi-working is trickier if you work in construction or drive a train.

Still, for office workers at least, a hybrid model of office/WFH seems most likely to be the new reality. “After the easing of most restrictions, it feels like the race is on for employers to set their working style in stone,” says Chris Poole, managing director of recruitment firm Robert Walters. “In the past 18 months, we have seen numerous corporations make statements about the return to office but even within the same sector, the stance differs significantly from firm to firm and even manager to manager.”

In fact, 40 per cent of employees are yet to hear about their future way of working, and might not be that happy about it when they do. In a survey of 2,000 UK office workers commissioned by the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM), 31 per cent felt their employer was forcing them back to the office. What’s clear is that across many industries, employers and employees will be spending the coming months negotiating what their post-pandemic workplaces will look like...

Bankers are returning to their desks, but the Square Mile feels very different. Employees at Goldman Sachs’s £1 billion London head office will be required to wear masks at all times (apart from when seated at their desks). Unlike its competitors such as Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs isn’t implementing a no jab, no job policy, but it has surveyed all staff about their vaccination status as an “important metric among our population”.

“The centre of gravity for our workforce is going to be in our buildings and in London it will be in this building,” says Richard Gnodde, chief executive of Goldman Sachs. “It’s really important to have our people together. We’ll continue to manage our exit from this in a cautious and appropriate way to make sure that our people feel comfortable.”

Miles Celic, who runs finance lobby group TheCityUK, says there “is no one size fits all” approach among members over what to do next, but reports that some bankers are only being told over the phone to return to their desks, as bosses fear putting anything in writing.

After Covid outbreaks on the trading floor, a grid seating plan could become the new normal. “Our traditional operating mode was to have all the specialists sitting next to each other, which in hindsight wasn’t great planning,” says Charles Bristow, co-head of global rates trading at JPMorgan.

The big banks are now brainstorming for solutions. During lockdown, UBS experimented with issuing its London-based traders with mixed reality Microsoft HoloLenses, which replicate the experience of working in a packed trading floor. At the JPMorgan office they plan to micromanage “rotations” to mix up teams to recreate the “incidental information exchange” you used to get from the pre-pandemic office.

As you’d expect from the sector with famously innovative perks, many tech companies are offering extra incentives and redesigning their work spaces to entice staff back. Commercial interiors company Meridian Interiors saw a 70 per cent increase in office refurbishment enquiries this year.

“The most successful companies are rethinking the office by creating the spaces we’ve longed for,” says Bruce Daisley, consultant and former EMEA boss of Twitter. “Many are creating a kind of town square area for watercooler moments, a library where people can do deep thinking and phone booth cubicles to do video calls.” Health and safety is, unsurprisingly, a new priority. “Companies are deploying touchless lifts and doors and smart-lighting solutions with UV lights which can identify and kill germs on surfaces.”

Google is trying to create the ultimate post-pandemic office at its Kings Cross “groundscraper”. Still under construction, it will one day be home to an indoor basketball court and rooftop running track. From September 1, around 60 per cent of teams will go into the office for collaboration days three times a week. Workers will be greeted by a new outdoor workspace overlooking the capital and team pods — spaces which can be assembled on-the-go with collapsible furniture and wheeled-in whiteboards.

In July, Google chief Sundar Pichai announced that Googlers will require vaccines to work on campus and, due to the Delta variant, the company will extend voluntary work from home, but only until October 18. “We firmly believe that in-person, being together, having a sense of community is super important when you have to solve hard problems and create something new, so we don’t see that changing,” declared Pichai.

Apple is also requesting its staff back in the office at least three days a week, but there has been pushback from staff who wrote an open letter to chief executive Tim Cook after a swathe of resignations. Over at Facebook, staff can apply to continue working from home if their job can be done remotely. But there’s a kicker: don’t expect London money if you’re now living in cheaper areas of the world. Salaries will be adjusted to fit your locale. At Twitter, workers can remain remote “forever” if they want to.

“We’re never going to go back to working the way we used to work,” says Mark Read, chief executive of Soho-based advertising firm WPP. “People are working from home three to four days a week so we probably need 20 per cent less space, but we’re not going to do that if everyone’s working from home on Mondays and Fridays, so we’ll see. Advertising and creative industries are something you learn from your colleagues and you can only do that, really, if you’re around them in an office.”

Daisley says that the legal implications of the hybrid model could be complex, particularly in the competitive creative sector. “One of the biggest advertising groups has said that only managers are expected to be in every day. But if you’re an ambitious 20-something with no responsibilities, you might think ‘I’ll look more eager and enthusiastic if I come in every day’ and you might well be at a bit of an advantage when it comes to promotion time. In the US, some advertising firms are ahead of this and are banning employees from coming in on the days they’re not expected to.”

A number of law firms, including members of the magic circle, are letting their lawyers and staff work from home for up to half of the time. Fieldfisher is gradually scaling up its days in the office from one to three by September. “Looking ahead to when we can return to our offices, we are keen to emphasise that we will not become a ‘virtual law firm’,” says Michael Chissick, managing partner at Fieldfisher. But a few firms such as Dentons have decided to shutter some offices and move all lawyers and staff working there to permanent remote working.

Latham & Watkins have told associates they will be expected into the office “for the majority of the time”. When it comes to the billable hour, commuting to and from the office eats into potential billing time. “If they are deep into a deal and they are working in their pyjamas for two weeks, that’s completely fine,” says a lawyer at Latham.

“There’s a balance here firms have to strike,” says Catrin Griffiths, editor of The Lawyer. “Polling of their staff consistently shows that the workforce don’t want to come back to a five-day week. But on the other side, some investment bank clients are saying that they want their advisers to be back in the office full-time. There’s a huge war for mid-level lawyer talent now which is inflating salaries and focusing law firm leaders’ minds on retention.”

“There had already been a steady workplace evolution at law firms — individual offices and stacks of files and papers were beginning to belong to the past,” says Gavin Tyler, managing partner at Cripps Pemberton Greenish, which relocated its London office from Chelsea to Victoria in May. “Many firms are now embracing open spaces, hot-desking and paperless working. Pre-pandemic, we were looking for around 11,000 sq ft and have reduced our requirement to 7,600 sq ft. We consulted our employees on how they would like to work and just 10 per cent wanted to return to the office full-time.

“But for junior lawyers and those providing guidance and training, more time spent in the office is essential,” he says. “A law firm’s culture is also entwined with the office. The importance of water cooler conversations cannot be underestimated. But more modern, flexible working practices are here to stay.”

Despite Rishi Sunak’s praise for the office, the vast majority of Whitehall staff are still WFH. “Most departments want people to be in for some of the time,” says Steve Littlewood, national officer for the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants. “We are pushing to make that as flexible as possible,” saying officials were “looking around the end of September for the new normal to start coming into effect”.

Each Whitehall department has been ordered to draw up its own Covid risk assessment, in line with private employers around the country. Most ministries have concluded that they could potentially return to 25-30 per cent occupancy without a threat to the health of staff. “Some ministers in various departments want more people to come in,” said one official. “You’re going to see more civil servants coming in in the coming weeks and months.”

Travel and tourism has been the sector hit hardest by coronavirus - turnover for the industry was down £1.4bn in March. Emma Arnold, 39, from Islington, works for a large American travel company with an office in Angel. “At the moment the office is open for voluntary use by employees only,” she says. “It’s at 30% capacity so it feels pretty empty, moving to 50% soon. You need to log your presence in an app so they can track and trace if anyone tests positive to Covid. They ask unvaccinated people to wear a mask. In the future they will allow a hybrid schedule (to be agreed with the manager and depending on the team) which I feel positive about, but I worry that it might create a bit of an ‘in’ or ‘out’ group depending on who’s in the office on which days. Redundancies seem inevitable and I’m sure presenteeism will play a part in these decisions.”

With Covid and Brexit disruptions, the past year has been brutal for the retail sector. But the brands that have survived are now welcoming their staff back to the office. Bruce Daisley says that many retail firms are using this as an opportunity to restructure. “I’m working with one big retailer who’s saying ‘We’re embarrassed by how traditional our culture has been and this is the moment to do something new.’” Some retailers are even repurposing their shop floor and turning it into desk space. Marks and Spencers is planning to redevelop the top floors of its Marble Arch store into rentable offices.

One retail brand which is happy to see the back of the WFH tracksuit is British menswear label Charles Tyrwhitt. “Sales of shirts have spiked since 19th July,” says Luke Kingsnorth, CEO of Charles Tyrwhitt, where employees are now working two days at home and three days from the London Bridge office. “When we surveyed our staff, 80% of them wanted a hybrid. It means we need to be more deliberate in how we plan our time and in a way it’s maybe less flexible than just being at home or just being in the office, but I think everyone is happy to be back and to replenish that well of human contact.”

Kingsnorth says that masks in the office are optional, there’s hand sanitiser “everywhere” and staff aren’t being crammed into meeting rooms. But despite the ‘grand reopening’, London still seems quiet. “We do a lot of business with the US and teams seem to be much more back to the office there,” he says. “I think it’s more of a gradual reintroduction for retail in London.”