We may prefer working from home but most of us will go back to the office in the end

Public opinion is resistant to Boris Johnson’s exhortations to go back to our desks but he’ll win out because of the hidden hand of the laws of economics, writes John Rentoul

Studies find 88 per cent of people who have been working from home say they would like to continue to do so at least some of the time (Getty)

Only one in six staff have returned to the office in British cities, according to one survey – and the government’s desperation to raise that number prompted one anonymous cabinet minister to say something foolish about working from home: “Companies will realise some people weren’t working as hard as they thought. There is going to be a review of how productive people are.”

The headline generated by that comment, “Go back to work or risk losing your job”, was denounced by an equally anonymous Downing Street source: “This is a deeply irresponsible headline with no truth behind it. Our priority has always and will always be protecting people’s jobs.”

Some parts of the government, at least, realise the danger of reviving the Conservatives’ “nasty party” problem. Especially when 88 per cent of people who have been working from home say they would like to continue to do so at least some of the time, according to a new survey by Cardiff and Southampton universities.

Even without the threatening language, Boris Johnson’s attempt to “encourage” workers back to the office is opposed by more people (47 per cent) than support it (31 per cent), according to YouGov this week.

The prime minister cannot even persuade the government’s own employees to go back to their desks. In a conference call with senior civil servants at the beginning of July he exhorted them to go back to their offices because that was the only way they could keep up with the gossip and intrigue so essential to their careers. But the response has been a silent strike – instead of working to rule (a form of industrial action in the old days), civil servants are working from home because, most of them say, they can be just as productive there, if not more so.

It didn’t help that Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, was sent out to do interviews today urging workers to go back to the office – by video from his home.

Johnson was joking about gossip and intrigue, but his serious argument is that people work more productively in offices. Everyone who has worked in an office is familiar with the arguments for and against homeworking: saving time on commuting; better work-life balance; the ability (for some people) to concentrate better, or to work flexible hours – versus poor communication; social isolation; the loss of the free flow of random ideas; and not being able to shout “shift-control-V” across the office to a colleague who wants to know how to paste without formatting.

There has been surprisingly little research into the economics of working from home. I have written before about a Chinese study of a large travel agency that split its workers in half, and found the half who worked from home were more productive, although they were less likely to be promoted.

What seems likely is that many businesses will find working from home – or especially a hybrid of splitting the week between home and office – more efficient. The coronavirus crisis will induce a step up or down in trends that were happening anyway, as broadband makes location irrelevant.

But that won’t apply to everyone. The reason most service industries are organised in offices must be because it has been the most efficient way of working. So, although there may have been some inertia – a culture of working in offices because that’s what most people do – which has been shaken out by the crisis, most businesses will probably go back to a primarily office-based life because they gain an invisible advantage by doing so.