This week former Asda and M&S boss Lord Stuart Rose said working from home was “not proper work”.
In an interview with BBC Panorama, Lord Rose said home working is part of the UK economy’s “general decline”, adding that worker productivity had taken a hit as a result.
However, the former CEO of Pregnant Then Screwed Joeli Brearley was critical of his comments and the programme in which they appeared.
On LinkedIn, she said Lord Rose had provided no evidence to support his claims.
“Panorama’s ‘Should we still be working from home?’ was disappointing. Research and data from academics was juxtaposed with a 70 year old bloke who runs a dry cleaning business telling us to get back to the office because he’s not cleaning enough suits,” she wrote.
“The arguments against remote working were conjecture or personal opinion.”
Brearley also criticised recent disparaging comments about home working from Lord Alan Sugar.
In a rebuttal to the claims that home working undermines employee productivity she highlighted links to academic evidence that working from home does not damage employee productivity.
Home working studies
This included research from the University of Pittsburgh on the impact return to the office mandates had had on the S&P 500. It found mandated office returns did not improve employee or company performance.
Another study, from the University of Chicago, found that people working from home often logged longer hours, and that their output per hour remained stable or increased.
A further study by Stanford University, in collaboration with the Chinese travel agency Ctrip, found that remote workers were 13 percent more productive than their in-office peers.
Brearley also emphasised the positive health and engagement benefits working from home can bring. She pointed to ONS data that shows people who work from home exercise more and sleep longer, with major benefits for worker health and wellbeing.
Working from home has also been found to help reduce the motherhood penalty, she said. Researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Southern California found that a 10 percent increase in working from home leads to nearly a 1 percent increase in employment for working mothers
She added: “Of course there are challenges and downsides with remote working – I get that. But the UK media, and an inordinate number of Lords, seem hell bent on dragging us all back to the office full time without a thorough investigation of the evidence, and it is driving me nuts.”
‘Common misconception’
Lord Rose’s claims also drew comment from Bar Huberman, content manager at Brightmine, who said the opinions of senior leaders like Lord Rose are not uncommon.
She pointed to a survey by Brightmine last year, which found that 28.9 percent of HR professionals said that some senior leaders do not appreciate the benefits of flexible working.
Huberman said: “There is a common misconception that flexible working is an employee benefit that comes at a cost to the employer because employees are less productive when they work flexibly. In reality, organisations that offer flexible working enjoy huge business benefits.
“Flexible working is one of the most effective approaches to enhancing employee satisfaction, which ultimately benefits businesses by fostering increased productivity. Furthermore, flexibility significantly contributes to cultivating a more inclusive environment.”
She added: “Flexible working opens employers up to new talent markets in diverse areas of the country, supports existing employees with different needs, and removes barriers to employees, who, without flexibility, are unable to take on certain work opportunities.”
Huberman said it was true that the success of home working depends on organisations adapting their working practices. But, she added, managers are learning to change.
Such changes include a rise in managers trusting employees to get on with their jobs, and managers having regular catch-ups with their remote team, which also benefits employees.
“The way in which employees learn from colleagues also needs to change, but again we are seeing lots of innovation around learning and development,” she said.
“Where HR teams face resistance to flexible working models such as working from home, they should address the specific concerns. If the concern relates to productivity, collate evidence that demonstrates the positive impact on productivity – there is a body of research that supports this.”
She said HR could also tap into the organisation’s own teams where flexible working has been successful, for example by gathering evidence on what tasks or projects have been completed, whether standards of quality were maintained and whether timescales and deadlines were adhered to.
“This should help to convince even the most sceptical senior leader that the flexible working strategy is having a positive impact on productivity, skills and innovation.”
The reinvigorated debate in the UK about working from home comes as the US president Donald Trump has begun to dismantle DEI projects, policies and teams in the US federal government.
A number of private sector employers in the US also disbanded their DEI teams and ditched polices ahead of Trump’s inauguration, including Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.
Video conferencing company Zoom, which has played a huge part in supporting home and remote working in recent years, has also dropped its DEI team. However, the board of Apple recently rejected shareholder demands to end its DEI policies dubbing the calls an attempt to “micromanage” the company.
