London workers spend an average of 2.3 days a week in the office, according to the think tank Centre for Cities.
According to its report, Office politics: London and the rise of home working, employees are spending 59% of time in the workplace they were in January 2020 just before the pandemic, suggesting that a “fully remote new normal” – which some predicted – has not materialised.
However, the Centre questions whether an average office week of this size will be enough to kickstart productivity levels in the capital and the country more widely.
“High-productivity, knowledge-intensive activities which make up the most productive parts of the UK economy are concentrated in central London,” the report points out. “This is because face-to-face interaction helps us to share information, come up with new ideas and facilitates on-the-job learning, all important elements for how knowledge-based industries operate.”
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The most common working pattern was two days a week, cited by 31% of respondents. Almost half of workers reported going in three, four or five days, however. Younger workers were more likely to be in the office than older workers, as were workers who lived within Greater London.
The think tank argues that many of the debates around remote working and the post-pandemic arrangements failed to acknowledge the importance of “agglomeration” – the geographic concentration of economic activity – and the impact less time in the office will have.
According to the Centre, one of the benefits of agglomeration is that workers and employers enjoy superior economic performance and higher productivity thanks to being close to one another.
The think tank argues that the government should work with Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, to encourage businesses to increase the number of days employees are expected in the office.
This should be supported by improvements to public transport and potentially removing peak fares on a Friday, the quietest day of the working week. The government should also be more proactive in measuring the impact of hybrid working on the economy and productivity, it adds.
“The Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that came with it inadvertently forced many advanced economies into a big experiment in new ways of working. We’re yet to see what this does to an economy that relies on creativity and interpersonal interaction,” said Andrew Carter, chief executive of the Centre.
“But the historic context is important: London’s city centre has been an enormous success story over the last hundred years. Unless something fundamental has changed in how people generate and share ideas, the future should be at most a moderated version of the past.”
Carter added that while home working had delivered many benefits for workers in knowledge-based jobs, these must be balanced with the “longer-term costs of lower levels of creativity and less on-the-job learning”.
“Lifting Covid-19 restrictions on its own has not been enough to bring some workers back. Policy makers should be wary that we don’t passively let a public health emergency turn into a longer-term negative impact on the economy.”
The Centre’s report follows remarks from chancellor Jeremy Hunt last week, who said employees should work in the office by default unless there is a good reason to work from home.
“I worry about the loss of creativity when people are permanently working from home and not having those water cooler moments, where they bounce ideas off each other,” Hunt said.
Alexia Pedersen, VP of EMEA at technology firm O’Reilly, agreed that the Mayor needed to do more to encourage workers back into offices in the capital.
“Without adequate support in place to remove the cost barriers of returning to the office full-time for both businesses and employees, London’s employers must regularly evaluate their work-from-anywhere policies to take into consideration any unforeseen challenges or obstacles to its success,” she said.
“The policy’s effectiveness and inclusivity can affect the employee experience, so it’s important that it continues to evolve, just as the world around us does.”
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