Businesses split on the return of work from home rules

With the num­ber of cas­es of the omi­cron vari­ant on the rise across the UK, prime min­is­ter Boris John­son announced the intro­duc­tion of plan B mea­sures to curb its spread.

As part of the tight­en­ing of restric­tions, face masks are set to become com­pul­so­ry in all indoor venues, except hos­pi­tal­i­ty, Covid pass­es will be required to enter cer­tain set­tings, such as night­clubs, and, from Mon­day, peo­ple will be asked to work from home again if they can.

Busi­ness groups were quick to crit­i­cise the tim­ing of the rule changes. CBI chief pol­i­cy direc­tor Matthew Fell described the new restric­tions as a “big set­back for busi­ness­es”. He adds: “Omi­cron will quite like­ly not be the last vari­ant. We need to cre­ate con­sis­ten­cy in our approach and build con­fi­dence by reduc­ing the oscil­la­tion between nor­mal life and restric­tions.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, British Cham­bers of Com­merce pres­i­dent Baroness Ruby McGre­gor-Smith says: “Yet again, firms are now being asked to make changes at the very last minute. Many busi­ness­es have only just begun to get back on their feet and this move will inevitably dam­age busi­ness con­fi­dence.” 

Some offices remaining open

For most busi­ness­es, out­side the hos­pi­tal­i­ty and retail sec­tors, the biggest change will be the return of home work­ing. While many organ­i­sa­tions have tran­si­tioned to a hybrid arrange­ment, with employ­ees com­mut­ing into work a few days a week, the new guid­ance rec­om­mends home work­ing takes pri­or­i­ty, in order to reduce the num­ber of con­tacts peo­ple have. This is a move that McGre­gor-Smith claims “will come at a huge cost to swathes of busi­ness­es”.

How­ev­er, Johnson’s instruc­tion to “go to work if you must but work from home if you can” appears to be less strict than the man­date to work from home “unless you are unable to” that was in place dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic.

Jo Mack­ie, an employ­ment lawyer for Slater and Gor­don, says that she has already received some enquiries from employ­ees in regards to whether they can still be asked to go into the office. She says: “The gen­er­al rule stays the same: if you can work from home, you should, unless employ­ers can give a good busi­ness rea­son for cer­tain staff to come in.”

Some organ­i­sa­tions have already said they will be leav­ing their premis­es open for employ­ees, if they wish to trav­el in. In response to Wednesday’s announce­ment, PwC chair­man Kevin Ellis said that the company’s offices “will remain open for our peo­ple who have a busi­ness or per­son­al need to use them”.

JP Mor­gan Chase, which was one of the first com­pa­nies to encour­age a return to the office fol­low­ing the lift­ing of restric­tions in the UK, will also ensure its build­ings are acces­si­ble for those that need to work from the office. But an inter­nal memo to col­leagues notes that the com­pa­ny expects a reduc­tion in the amount of peo­ple com­ing in as its teams are asked to reassess who can work from home more reg­u­lar­ly. 

Oth­er busi­ness­es are con­scious of the impacts that pre­vi­ous lock­downs have had on their staff. Leeds-based dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and PR agency Wolfend­en will be allow­ing indi­vid­u­als to come into the office, despite the move to plan B. 

Man­ag­ing direc­tor Daisy Wolfend­en explains: “We are keep­ing our offices open for those who need to come in, whether for prac­ti­cal rea­sons or because their men­tal health suf­fers when work­ing from home full time. This is some­thing we learnt in the first lock­down as some of our staff real­ly strug­gled men­tal­ly or didn’t have suit­able setups at home to work effec­tive­ly.” 

WFH but parties can go ahead

After almost two years of devel­op­ing remote work­ing strate­gies, most organ­i­sa­tions, such as Harp­er James Solic­i­tors, are well pre­pared for these plan B restric­tions. Its CEO Toby Harp­er claims that the new changes “will not dis­rupt our busi­ness” and he doesn’t expect to see “any impact on our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty fol­low­ing the move to plan B”.

Sim­i­lar­ly, New­cas­tle-based soft­ware firm Sage says that its flex­i­ble work­ing prac­tices make it well placed to enable employ­ees to work from home, in line with the new gov­ern­ment guide­lines. How­ev­er, its chief peo­ple offi­cer Aman­da Cus­din believes the gov­ern­ment needs to “prop­er­ly equip busi­ness­es for the short-term uncer­tain­ty and chal­lenges that they face so we don’t undo the progress made towards recov­ery”.

With only two weeks left before Christ­mas, the big­ger con­cern for many staff will be the impact these new rules will have on the office Christ­mas par­ty. Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, John­son said Christ­mas par­ties shouldn’t be can­celled at this stage, as long as guid­ance is fol­lowed.

Despite this reas­sur­ance, many organ­i­sa­tions have already tak­en mea­sures into their own hands. Among them is insur­ance start­up Urban Jun­gle, which was pre­vi­ous­ly in favour of the return of in-per­son office work when restric­tions were lift­ed ear­li­er this year. 

Its chief of staff and oper­a­tions Helen Hodges says: “Although our aim has always been to get every­one back into the office as soon and as safe­ly as pos­si­ble to build an office-cen­tric cul­ture, we antic­i­pat­ed that win­ter would be unpre­dictable — and we haven’t man­dat­ed that every­one has to come in.”

The com­pa­ny will now be hold­ing a vir­tu­al Christ­mas par­ty, with the hopes that a prop­er cel­e­bra­tion can be sched­uled for Jan­u­ary. 

But, once again, this is an issue on which com­pa­nies are split. JP Mor­gan will not be pre­vent­ing end of year “work gath­er­ings” from going ahead, instead stress­ing that teams “exer­cise cau­tion and good judge­ment on the size and nature of the activ­i­ty”. Like­wise, Harp­er James Solic­i­tors plans for its Christ­mas do to go ahead.

In spite of the dif­fer­ent approach­es busi­ness­es have tak­en in response to the government’s plan B mea­sures, there will be one thing they’ll all wish for this Christ­mas: an end to uncer­tain­ty.