What are the new rules about working from home?
The business news that matters
Hello and welcome to the latest Off to Lunch…
September is the month of back-to-school and back-to-work. But for many businesses this year it is also the moment for a renewed push to get staff back in the office more regularly.
There has been a significant increase in back-to-office comments over the last couple of weeks from chief executives I have spoken to or seen quoted elsewhere. This is not about getting staff back into the office every day, far from it. Most chief executives now recognise the value of allowing staff some flexibility and can see how it improves productivity on some tasks. But is about a step-up in the gradual post-Covid increase in office working.
Take Lloyd’s of London, for example. Bruce Carnegie-Brown, chairman of the insurance hub, said yesterday that staff should be in the office for at least three days every week and also that this should not just be Tuesday to Thursday. He said:
“We’ve got to make sure that we still work across the working week and that we don’t impede our ability to serve customers by the bookends of the week, defaulting to being a long weekend for everybody every week.”
Lloyd’s has revamped its underwriting room to try to encourage staff to come to the office, with improved technology and desks. At present staff come into the office for two-and-a-half days on average, Carnegie-Brown said. You can find out more about his comments in a story by The Guardian here
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported earlier this week that Lloyds Banking Group is offering free food to staff who are now required to spend at least two days a week in the office. The FT report said:
The shift, timed to coincide with a typically busy month in capital markets after the summer lull, is part of a broader productivity push by Lloyds that has met with stiff resistance. But it is becoming the norm for the country’s crucial financial services industry to harden its stance against what some employers see as a productivity-sapping habit of remote work.
Bloomberg also published a big analysis this week on the post-Covid working practices around the world, noting “stark differences” between countries and continents. For example, Asian and European workers have headed back to the office at a faster rate than America, but this doesn’t include the UK, which has one of the highest rates for remote-working in the world. It also doesn’t include companies in the US like Goldman Sachs which want staff back in the office five-days-a-week.
The overall theme of that Bloomberg piece was that businesses and staff are still trying to work out what works best, but that remote working is here to stay in some form. The consultancy firm McKinsey has estimated that $1.3 trillion (£1 trillion) could be wiped off the value of office buildings in nine key global cities, including London, in a worst-case scenario. You can find the Bloomberg analysis here and the McKinsey report here
A report by Goldman Sachs last month found that between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of Americans work-for-home for at least some of the week, down from a peak of 47 per cent during the Covid-19 crisis but well up on the 2.6 per cent reported pre-Covid. FT Alphaville looked at that report here
One last point on this, The Times ran an interesting editorial column in Thursday’s newspaper that included a reminder about the benefits of home-working - it helps people who would otherwise not be able to work to get a job, including those with physical or mental disabilities. You can find that piece here
Other stories that matter…
1. A government auction to find companies to build new offshore wind farms has failed to attract any bids. This is the latest blow to the government’s drive to boost the UK’s renewable energy production. It comes after Swedish energy company Vattenfall announced in July that it had halted development of the Norfolk Boreas offshore wind project due to rising costs. The energy industry has warned that the government set the price it will pay for electricity from the wind projects too low, making them unviable. Keith Anderson, chief executive of ScottishPower, said: “This is a multibillion-pound lost opportunity to deliver low-cost energy for consumers and a wake-up call for government.” Story here
2. Apple has paid $5 million (£4 million) for the broadcast rights to Michael Lewis’s book on Sam Bankman-Fried. Story by The Ankler here
3. Soumaya Keynes has written in the Financial Times about how the economics of motherhood continues to punish women in their careers and cause inequality. Piece here
4. Author David Epstein has written about how sprinter Dina Asher-Smith neatly described the importance of athletes - and businesses - being ready for anything. Or, as Epstein says, the importance of respecting Sod’s Law - anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Piece here
5. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Steve Jobs before he died all have something in common about their approach to work - they were obsessed with keeping their focus and clarity of thought. That is according to an interesting analysis by Neckar's Alchemy of Money here
Podcast…
A reminder that the latest episode of our Business Studies podcast looks at the collapse of Wilko and why businesses fail. The retail veteran Ian Shepherd discusses what it was like being chief executive of video game retailer Game when it collapsed into administration and what retailers need to do today to not just survive but thrive. You can listen to the episode on Substack here, Apple here and Spotify here.
Business Studies is now taking a short summer break but I will be filling that gap with some thoughts on our recent episodes. Stay tuned…
And finally…
A survey of 9,000 members of Which?, the consumer magazine, has found that Wells in Somerset is the best village in the UK to visit. Other villages in the top five were Avebury in Wiltshire, Corfe Castle in Dorset, Port Sunlight in Merseyside and Grasmere in Cumbria. You can find the research and analysis here
Wells, pictured below, actually has a cathedral, which technically makes it the smallest city in the UK after the City of London…
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Best
Graham