Have we finally reached the new normal? It was an enduring question during the pandemic, as people grappled with rapidly changing laws and emerging advice about Covid.
Now, two years after most of the restrictions were lifted, Britain appears to have found a balance between Working From Home and Returning To Office. Just under half of workers WFH at least some of the time, according to the Office for National Statistics, a state of affairs that seems unlikely to change, since the number of job ads mentioning home working tracked by analysts WFH Research has been hovering at 15%-20% for the past two years, compared with 3% in 2019.
This profound shift in working patterns has had effects on workers, firms and society. Academics around the world have focused on the subject and their work has been examined in a major piece of research – a review of almost 2,000 papers by Charlotte Hall of the UK Health Security Agency and Professor Neil Greenberg and colleagues at King’s College London. Some of the results were predictable – others less so.
1 Presenteeism
Home working is popular because workers enjoy the flexibility of being able to tackle practical matters, from childcare to taking deliveries. The Hall review found those who WFH tend to feel more productive and enjoy their work more. But that positivity can lead to unhealthy behaviour, with workers less likely to take breaks or take time off if they fall ill.
That might sound like a win to a more cynical boss, but Greenberg warns against that thinking: “If you work when you’re not fully effective, things can go wrong – particularly in safety-critical roles.” Presenteeism actually cost UK employers up to £29bn in 2020, according to Deloitte. “If someone’s mind isn’t on the job, things can go badly wrong,” Greenberg adds.
2 Families
For some, WFH offers a solution to the conflict between the demands of their boss and their family – a conflict which has often been resolved by one partner sacrificing their career, sometimes known as the parenthood penalty.
WFH alleviated that for women in the US, according to a study by Emma Harrington at Virginia University, which found that a 10% increase in WFH led to a 1% increase in the number of mothers in employment.
And a study in Japan, where men have traditionally been far less engaged in domestic work or childcare, found that WFH led to men spending more time on household chores. Chihiro Inoue of Tokyo University showed that a day of home working led to an increase in family time of 5.6%.
However, Hall’s review found conflicting evidence, and some studies suggested conflict between work and family life, for example diary clashes, was in fact a disadvantage to home working.
3 Health and wellbeing
Another draw of WFH is control over your personal space and food. The Hall review found that people eat more fruit, vegetables, dairy products and home-cooked food, with younger workers and women the most likely to eat more healthily. But that freedom comes with a risk: home working also means more snacking, more cigarettes and more alcohol. In one study, 46.9% of workers who moved to home working gained weight.
“At an individual level, it’s easy to see that home working is good for me because I can look after my children,” Greenberg says. “But at the same time, it’s good to be aware that actually I may get fat, I may drink too much, I may feel isolated. So I have to make efforts to do something differently.”
4 Clothes and decor
Not every home worker will respond to those risks by buying an underdesk treadmill to do 10,000 steps a day while on mute, although some have. A wardrobe change is an easier option. “Loungewear and sportswear are increasingly everyday attire, and have essentially become workwear for many,” says Francesca Smith, a senior research analyst at Mintel. “Consumers are seeking clothes that are functional, comfortable, and stylish, that are suitable for video calls, errand-running, and for their lunchtime workouts on the days they work from home.”
Working from home is also behind a rise in sales of paint, homeware and bedroom furniture, according to Helen Collins at market researcher GfK. Air fryers are selling well too. “Not only did the air fryer benefit from the lockdown boost where people were forced to cook at home, but also from the desire to save energy,” Collins says.
Even headphone and headset sales have continued to grow, despite a “saturated” marketplace, she says.
5 Conspicuous consumption
The richest home workers – those with the lion’s share of the £190bn that households saved during the lockdowns – have developed luxurious tastes. “We’ve seen lots of the luxury brands that maybe didn’t have a big presence in soft furnishings now doing homeware,” says Fflur Roberts at Euromonitor. “So people can literally dress their home head to toe in Dior or Gucci. Harrods has a whole section now.”
And that extends across the home. Diptyque, best known for its £100 candles, now sells lavender-scented multisurface cleaner and orange-blossom washing-up liquid.
6 Personal care
Not everyone has splashed their cash; some cannot see the point in dressing up to stay in. Mintel data shows less interest in makeup and perfume – and deodorant. “Research finds that 88% of adults who work mainly or entirely out of the home wear deodorant or antiperspirant every day, compared to 81% who work mainly or entirely at home,” Smith says.
7 Commuting
Transport for London (TfL) data demonstrates that hybrid workers in London tend to pick Mondays and Fridays as WFH days. Figures for Monday 5 February show about 700,000 fewer tube journeys than Thursday 8 February, the busiest day that week. Overall, journeys on London Underground are about 20% lower than in 2019.
Wednesdays and Thursdays are now the busy days, when people can be fairly certain that colleagues and friends will also be in the office. “There is a trade-off between a long commute time and the fact that you get to interact with other interesting people when you go into the centre of town,” says Ben Etheridge, senior economics lecturer at the University of Essex. “If no one else is in town, there’s no point in commuting.”
8 Cities and offices
In spite of the strong appetite for some form of hybrid working, many chief executives believe their staff will be back five days a week within a few years. For now, bosses are reducing their property bills, choosing smaller but more modern and energy-efficient office space. That means swathes of older buildings are becoming redundant – and one reason why the UK’s housing secretary, Michael Gove, wants to allow commercial properties to be turned into homes without planning permission.
It also means a boom in office refurbishment. Deloitte, which tracks construction in major cities through surveys, says that London refurbs are at record levels, with 306,000 sq metres of space being worked on. In Manchester, refurbs have overtaken construction of new office spaces for the first time. Philip Parnell, a partner at Deloitte, says: “There are several reasons for the shift to refurbishments, but one is to align with occupiers’ clear desire for their offices to be more appealing to their existing and future workforce. There is a recognition that employees now expect better facilities to ‘earn the commute’.”
That means rooftop gardens with beehives, better canteens, gyms, bike parking and changing rooms – “essential” items for top-quality London offices, Parnell says.
9 Gen Z careers
One of the findings of the Hall review was that WFH was perceived to be impeding career progression. Recruiters say executives believe that the twentysomethings in their workplace lack the people skills and experience that comes from working alongside colleagues.
Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, disputes this. “People in their 50s feel that younger people are going to miss out on formative experiences, that we learned how to do our work by osmosis. But young people in London are much more confident about their ability to not just do the job, but to do the things you would associate with growth.”
Duffy and his colleagues found that 40% of 16- to 24-year-olds felt it was easier to put themselves forward for important tasks when working remotely.
“They are more comfortable with the tech,” Duffy said. “And there is something democratising about a Zoom or Teams call – the hierarchy is a lot less clear, and if you put your hand up people don’t tend to ignore you. People control physical space just by body language – that’s much harder in this environment.”
10 Crime fighting
Another practical effect of home working is that an occupied home is less vulnerable. Researchers at Sheffield University found that a 9.5 percentage point rise in home working led to a 4% fall in burglaries.
Professor Jesse Matheson and his colleagues examined street-level crime data and compared it with the number of people working from home. It found a 30% drop in burglaries was due to burglars avoiding homes which were occupied, and also because more people at home meant more “eyes on the street”.
11 The high street
Matheson also found separately that remote working moved more economic activity to the suburbs, leading to the rise of the midweek manicure and sneaky afternoon round of golf.
“Thanks to more flexible work patterns, since Covid we have seen a rise in the midweek mani,” says Claire Aggarwal, an advisory member to the British Beauty Council.
And sports analysts the Revenue Club discovered golfers have found new times to play. Until 2019, there was no difference between the numbers of players teeing off in the morning or afternoon. But afternoons rose to constitute more than 60% of tee-offs in 2020 and have remained higher than mornings.
12 Environment
People who work from home full-time have a carbon footprint 54% smaller than those in offices in the US, although the difference is much less pronounced for hybrid workers, according to Cornell University. This is mostly due to not commuting, but also because offices use a lot of energy – enough that TfL’s commuting numbers appear to show a slight rise during cold weather, as workers avoid heating their own homes.
