It looks as though people will be working from home for at least part of the working week:
UBS lets two-thirds of staff combine working from home with the office
1/3 of telecommuters expect to continue WFH - BBJ (Hungary)
Future workplace will be WFH-office hybrid - Times of India
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This is called 'hybrid' working - as the Telegraph explains:
Bosses face home working clash with staff as new divide emerges
Employees overwhelmingly back a hybrid approach to working but bosses appear set to burst the WFH dream
ByLucy Burton ; Tom Rees and Hannah Boland15 June 2021 • 12:28am
Bosses are on a collision course with staff over a shift to permanent home working as official figures indicate huge numbers of employees want to stay away from the office.
The Prime Minister's delay to the Covid-19 roadmap on Monday evening means hopes have been dashed for organisations seeking a return to normal from next Monday - with Goldman Sachs among a string of major employers expected to change their plans.
However, figures from the Office for National Statistics released on Monday suggested that many staff are hopeful that they will not have to return permanently at all. A total of 85 per cent of adults who are currently working from home want to adopt a “hybrid” approach after the pandemic by splitting their time between home and the office, data from the ONS revealed.
At the same time, almost two in five firms expect more than three-quarters of staff to be in their normal workplace post-Covid, indicating that businesses and employees could be at loggerheads when the Prime Minister’s work from home advice is lifted...
Joseph Lappin, head of employment at law firm Stewarts, warned workers are unlikely to have reasonable grounds to defy instructions to return to the office once restrictions are lifted. He said: “If employers instruct staff to come back, to go back to the office, in ordinary circumstances that would be a lawful and reasonable instruction.”
Some experts have warned of a resignation boom looming amid the biggest shift in working patterns for decades. Half of Britons are already at their place of work as of mid-May while a quarter remain at home and 11 per cent are hybrid working, the ONS said...
Mr Lappin said employers could face legal action if they fire staff who refuse to return to the office while work from home advice is in place. He said: “If the government guidance is that employees should only be working in the office if they cannot work from home, I think employees will have a legitimate basis for contesting an employer’s instruction to return to the office on health and safety grounds. We will see employees who believe that they have been unfairly dismissed for failing to follow an instruction to return to the office... I do think we will see Covid-19 related unfair dismissal claims over the next six to 12 months.”
US bank Goldman Sachs, whose boss David Solomon has repeatedly argued that working from home will not become a permanent fixture after the Covid crisis, was among the firms to tell staff last month that their time at home was up. The company sent a memo around to staff in which it urged staff to complete a survey on their vaccination status, so it could plan how to map out the return to the office.
Some businesses are adapting to staff demands with remote work job postings soaring. Online job adverts related to home working are three times higher than pre-virus levels and are climbing far faster than other postings, the ONS said. Remote work job ads now account for 8 per cent of overall postings.
Abi Casey, co-head of strategic analysis at the ONS, said the data could show a divide between workers wanting a hybrid approach and businesses wanting more staff in the office. She said: “There are potential impacts in terms of the wider impacts on society and the economy if we have increased home working going forward. For example, commuting [and] city centres may be impacted with a smaller number of people going to work as well as shifts in regional populations and long-term business investment.”
Corporations have been urging for the Government to allow more people to return to offices in recent weeks, including Primera Corporation, which runs office areas including around Victoria, saying there needed to be "clear messages about how people can safely return to their places of work". Primera said: “Businesses have invested millions of pounds to create safe and welcoming offices, the transport system is cleaner than ever and London is ready to welcome people back.”
A Morgan Stanley survey of businesses across the UK and Europe suggests office workers want on average two days per week at home, double the pre-Covid level, with some 31pc of home workers keen to work remotely most of the week.
“My sense is that there will be an interesting generational shift,” says Nick O’Donnell, a partner at law firm Baker McKenzie. “The older generation of deal-doers has grown up knowing how to work in person meetings to their advantage and won’t want to give that up. However, the younger generation is learning new approaches and already spends so much of their life online that it is also their natural forum for business. It will take a few years to play out but I suspect that gritty face to face negotiations will largely go the way of the telex and fax machines and getting together will be reserved more for problem solving and relationship building.”
This tension is already starting to play out as some of the world’s biggest companies face staff campaigns against coming back in. Apple’s employees are pushing back on plans for a return to the office, according to a letter seen by The Verge, after workers were told they must be back at least three days a week from September.
Meanwhile Amazon, which told many of its workers in March that its future was going to be “office-centric”, has now said it will let staff work from home twice a week.
“There will certainly be flashpoints over the next weeks and months ahead as employers ask staff to return to their normal place of work,” says Joseph Lappin, head of employment at law firm Stewarts. “Employees who at the moment are very happy working from home will say, ‘well this has all gone very well over the last 18 months, why do I suddenly need to come back to the office?’”
It is not just bosses who want their teams to return. The economic consequences from a lasting shift to remote working are potentially huge if demand for services, housing, transport and office space shifts out of cities or dwindles. A delay to the lifting of the work from home advice will prolong the pressure facing Britain’s biggest city centres, which are still suffering from suppressed footfall. Spending and shopper traffic has failed to recover most in the likes of London, Manchester and Birmingham while high streets in small towns have bounced back far more rapidly...
“However, the benefits of remote working will be front of mind as we squeeze back into busy commuter trains in September.”
Read more: Your rights if your employer asks you to return to the office
Is there a working clash at your company? Let us know in the comments section below which side of the battle you're on.
Bosses face home working clash with staff as new divide emerges
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It is a generation thing:
... a lot of young people like WFH so much that they would rather quit than go back to the office.
Morning Consult, a data research firm, conducted a poll for Bloomberg News in May that showed that 39% of Americans surveyed would definitely consider looking for a new job if their employer asked them to come back to the office. That percentage is even higher amongst young people. According to the report, a whopping 49% of Gen Z and millennials would quit if their bosses aren't flexible about remote work...
Controlling where people are can also be seen as a way that employers assert dominance over their employees. “They feel like we’re not working if they can’t see us,” Twidt told Bloomberg. Not only do young people like Twidt seem to be resisting that sort of authoritarian impulse, they also want to do what’s good for their mental health. And working from home, it turns out, may be better for many folks’ emotional wellbeing.WFH is working and young people don't want to go back to an office
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As the World Economic Forum says:
Working from home (WFH) is here to stay. A new study suggests 20% of full work days will be completed from home in the future – compared to just 5% before the pandemic.
But despite initial challenges, the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) predicts the WFH trend will stick thanks to benefits for both employees and employers.
Here are five reasons why the shift to home working will be a long-lasting trend, according to the NBER’s survey of more than 30,000 people in the US...
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