Capita sees ‘minimal’ impact from pingdemic as staff continue to work from home

Chief executive Jon Lewis said the majority of the outsourcing company’s employees are still not going in to the office despite restrictions easing.

At its peak more than 600,000 people were being pinged in a week (Yui Mok/PA) (PA Wire)

The boss of one of Britain’s biggest employers said his company has avoided a large hit from the so-called pingdemic by continuing to allow many of its staff to work from home.

Capita chief executive Jon Lewis said the majority of the outsourcing firm’s employees are still not going in to the office, despite coronavirus restrictions easing in recent months.

He said that at the height of the period when Britons were being told to self-isolate because they had come into contact with someone with Covid-19, there had been only a “minimal” impact on Capita’s business.

The company employs around 43,000 people in the UK, but less than 1% of them were self-isolating during the peak of the pingdemic.

Mr Lewis told the PA news agency: “That, in some ways, was surprising.

“I will say we have taken an extraordinarily cautious approach to how we operate the business through the pandemic – 40,000 of our colleagues today continue to work from home, we have very measured and appropriate guidelines in place, and a very measured approach to returning to the office.

“I like to think that helped mitigate a good many of our colleagues being pinged and therefore, the business impact has been minimal.”

He added: “That doesn’t stop them getting pinged from social activity. But when you think about the amount of time people spend travelling to work and in work … it has to be a significant reduction in their propensity to be exposed.”

Mr Lewis said a large number of his staff want to continue working from home, either permanently or part-time, in the future.

His comments came as Capita reported that it swung from a £28.5 million pre-tax loss to a £261.1 million profit in the first six months of the year.

The business now expects to grow revenue organically this year for the first time since 2015.

However, Mr Lewis could not say when growth might translate into Capita reintroducing a dividend for shareholders.

“We need to complete the disposal programme, we need to finalise what we believe the right capital structure for the business needs to be. And, as part of that deliberation, we will make some decisions on dividend. But we’re not going to be doing that in 2021,” he said.