It is clear from the press in recent weeks that there has been a widespread shift in terms of how much homeworking employers are willing to allow and indeed, in some cases, an almost complete volte face – with numerous house-hold name employers reportedly mandating their staff to work four or five days in the office. Towards the end of last week, the BBC reported that Lord Sugar is telling workers to get their (if you’ll pardon the phrase) “bums back to the office”. Indeed, KPMG’s latest CEO Outlook at the end of 2024 revealed that
“CEOs are hardening their stance on returning to pre-pandemic ways of working, with 83 percent expecting a full return to the office within the next three years – a notable increase from 64 percent in 2023”.
The reasons for the expected shift to increased time in the office are fairly obvious and nothing really new – from facilitating better collaboration across teams to ensuring juniors receive adequate supervision, reversing the potential for Friday to become a de facto third weekend day, team spirit, collegiality, blah blah, to name some of the key ones. All very worthy in principle, of course, but we are still left paddling about in the chasm between returns which are expected in the sense of “anticipated” on the one hand and those which are expected in the sense of “required” on the other.
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