Apple is telling staff to return to the office – is working from home coming to an end?

There is a tug-of-war taking place between the attractions of hybrid working and the difficulties of managing a workforce that is not physically in the same place most of the time, writes Hamish McRae

There are significant cost savings both to employer and employee when working from home (Getty)

Working from home? Still? Or less agreeably working on holiday? Or under the cosh to get back into the office?

Apple Inc has just given its staff a deadline of 5 September for them to return to the office. They must spend at least three days a week there: Tuesday, Thursday and one other day agreed among their team. So if that is what the most valuable company in the Western world demands, will this become the new normal more generally? How does this square with the UK pattern of workers on average spending only 1.5 days a week in the office? Or will the US be an outlier on hybrid working, as it is over its very low vacation allowances compared with most of the rest of the developed world?

Several things are happening and as always it is hard to pick out what is important – the trends that will gather pace everywhere – and what are just experiments that will fade. While the return to the office seems to be happening much more slowly than many expected, there is a tug-of-war taking place between the attractions of hybrid working and the difficulties of managing a workforce that is not physically in the same place most of the time.