Complete BS (Times, £) from Jonathan Reynolds, Business Secretary. This is all about Labour seeking to appeal to female voters (with a view to the 2029 general election) with a poor work ethic, who would prefer to “work” – in truth, not work – at home. Note the focus on roles for which this is even possible, notably women tapping on keyboards, many in non-jobs in the public sector. Bit tricky to work from home if you’re a construction worker i.e. a man.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Agreed, complete BS. Working at home can be more productive. Initially at least. However, habits and apathy creep in. We saw that in lockdown. Nothing beats a strict routine, at work at 9:00am, interacting, communicating, and pure motivation. I’ve seen working at home go wrong too many times with other people.
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The CV of the minister says it all. Never had an actual job.
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Generally the examples given about this are anecdotes about small “creative” media businesses or massive bureaucracies especially public services. In the latter especially local and national government there is of course almost no real penalty for low productivity. As you say the bureaucracies are usually “female dominated” and generally are becoming more so as women seek work that has a good “work life balance” and generous provision for maternity, “carers” and sick leave as well as “career breaks” or “sabbaticals”. A trend identified by Prof. Hakim in her preference theory and validated by extensive research in Sweden as their equality initiatives increased “workforce segregation” and a resultant “gap” in both earnings and senior management. Fortunately for the Swedes the supposed solution to these problems, mandatory male parental leave to get men to be less work centred, has failed to prevent the continuing “workforce segregation” as Sweden’s still formidable private sector businesses generate the money to support their massive state sector. Not least because the men make sure they are “still in the game” while off on mandatory leave, in exactly the way women don’t. Recently chatting to my wife’s American cousins, all of whom have retired recently and taken to seeing the world on a series of cruises I was surprised that even those in corporate law and insurance had never had a “holiday” entitlement in terms of paid leave, they had a couple of weeks unpaid entitlement. Hence all four were now “vacationing”. By the time I retired from public service I had an entitlement to the equivalent to 7 weeks paid leave. Even on that basis one can see why the USA is so much richer than the UK! As you say it is complete nonsense to suggest our flatlined productivity (for 12 years) will improve by working even less!
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“In fact, the financial crisis sweeping through Britain’s institutions is so severe that it’s left three universities on the verge of collapse, and 40 per cent of all universities in the country expecting to run big deficits this year” I doubt that it would do any harm for more than the three went bust. Quite a few are simply teacher training colleges or FE Colleges that turned themselves into “University”.
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it wont always work. it has done for certain roles such as IT development( have a family member who works from home). Ive tried in the past, didn’t think much of it.
during covid I had to work because of key worker status and nature of the job. One of my friends also worked during covid and told me about the number of colleagues who were “working from home”, but were caught holding meetings whilst walking around the DIY shops, supermarkets etc. many of thoese were displined by their employer for doing this.
also there is the issue of health and safety of your work environment. given that so many people live in “rabbit hutch” housing their work environment would fail a workplace assesment.
some employers love this idea because it cuts down some of their operating costs, but I would argue that if your office was london and you were commuting, then employers should deduct the london weighting( as suggested for the civil servants who have not returned to work).
one poor example of working from home was a senior bank of england executive who decided to move to brasil with his new family but kept working remotely( i don’t believe he was ever physically present for the job after the move). BOE should have said sorry to see you go, best of luck with your new life in brasil and set an example with this. this is on top of the civil service some of whom want to work abroad for longer periods because its conducive to family life( whereas I read that as cheaper cost of living but the same pay for living in the UK).
as the cost of commuting is cited as one good reason for doing this, I would suggest a move to small rented regional offices and work remotely from there. it fits the critera of meeting employment enviroment legislation, encourages team cohesiveness, and ensures a definitive seperation of work and home to ensure a work life balance…
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Thanks Rob, interesting.
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