Britain’s working from home culture is creating a generation “used to not doing proper work”, the former boss of Marks and Spencer and Asda has said. The Mail has more.
Lord Stuart Rose warned that personal development is suffering from workers not going into the office, while it is also damaging young people’s mental health.
He spoke out amid a drive by major companies such as Amazon, JP Morgan, Sports Direct and Boots whose head office staff now have to be in the workplace every day.
Just over a quarter of people (26%) in the U.K. are thought to be hybrid-working, with 13% fully remote and 41% fully office-based.
The trend began during the pandemic in 2020 when the Government ordered millions of workers to stay at home to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19.
As lockdown restrictions were eased, many workers enjoyed the flexibility being at home offered for childcare as well as saved time and money by not commuting.
But this has put many workers on a collision course with bosses who now want them in the office more, with some even threatening or taking strike action.
Lord Rose hit out at WFH culture during an episode of Panorama called ‘Should We Still Be Working From Home?’ which airs on BBC One at 8pm this evening.
He said: “We are creating a whole generation, and probably a generation beyond that, of people who are used to actually not doing what I call proper work.
“I believe that productivity is less good if you work from home. I believe that your personal development suffers, that you are not going to develop as well as you might if you’ve been in the workplace as long as I have.
“And I think lastly there is a connection – a correlation yet to be proven no doubt – between the current state of mental health, particularly young people, and the number of people who are working away from a workplace. I think it’s bad.”
The programme, which is also already available on iPlayer, looks at whether the shift to WFH is good for the U.K. economy and workers – and what it means for the country’s towns and cities.
Reporter Zoe Conway asked Lord Rose about people with young children who need flexibility, but he said: “People who drive trains have to go to work, people who work in operating theatres have to go to work, people who work in service industries like retail have to go to work, and others don’t.
“What’s different? They have children, they have problems, they have issues. You deal with it.”
He added: “We have regressed in this country in terms of working practices, productivity and in terms of the country’s wellbeing, I think, by 20 years in the last four.”
Lord Rose was Executive Chair of Asda until November, having previously been Chief Executive of M&S for six years until 2011.
But Rebecca Florisson, Principal Analyst at Lancaster University’s The Work Foundation, told MailOnline: “The recent push-back from some employers to roll back on hybrid and remote work is unhelpful, and risks undoing some of the gains that have been made in this area since the pandemic.”
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