Kate Andrews:

Employees outraged at being asked to return to the office fail to see the costs of this revolution

“It’s the life I’ve always wanted,” a friend tells me when we meet up for a socially distanced drink. I have come from the office and arguably so has she: her desk at home, from which she will be working until the start of 2021, at least. She has traded the early morning commute for comfortable, casual clothing, no longer crowding on to public transport multiple times a day, and saving plenty of money as a result. It’s the not-sosecret joy of lockdown for many office workers: the instruction to work from home wasn’t so much a restriction on their freedoms, as liberation from the hassles of Monday to Friday.

And many of them are now outraged that they are being asked back. Only a third of British employees have returned to the office, compared with two thirds in France and Germany. The Government has started a “get back to work” drive, but a recent poll found that over 90 per cent of people who can work from home want to keep doing so, at least for part of the week.

Of course, we all know who hasn’t found this dramatic shift to working from home very comfortable: the millions of employees in service industries, many of whom work for businesses designed to cater to the office worker. Some say this is an organic shift, albeit a painful one, and it’s best to embrace it: shame about Pret A Manger, but better that we adapt sooner rather than later.

However, such confidence is misguided. An economy as bruised and battered as ours may take its toll on shop workers and baristas first, but the office worker is by no means immune. The abandonment of the office practically overnight has profound implications, even if the consequences are not yet felt. Home workers are deluding themselves if they think they only stand to be net winners.

Companies may be saving money on rent, but there are huge costs associated with the loss of creativity and innovation that come from a collaborative office environment. Evidence suggests that even the perception of working together can enhance performance, while a study of more than 1,100 firms found more collaborative companies were five times more likely to be “high performing”. Working from home encourages the opposite: it creates a silo mentality and is, by nature, a solitary activity. Many big companies have “made do” during lockdown, but they are not thriving. Soon they will be looking for savings, which may well result in more technological upgrades and fewer employees.

Chances for progression are likely to be hindered, too. Young people have already been hit hard by coronavirus: one in three 18 to 25-year-olds lost their job or were furloughed during the crisis. But they will face even more challenges so long as companies stay clear of the office. If they do manage to secure a job, the best shot they have at building up professional contacts is a coffee over Zoom (which established employees naturally dread). All upskilling efforts will be left to online courses, as the concept of learning on the job fades into obscurity. There will be no conversations to overhear, tricks to pick up or off-the-cuff corrections and suggestions to take on board. Work – especially for those without contacts or experience – will boil down to its most basic and boring core: ticking a series of boxes in exchange for a pay slip, with no expectation of getting more out of the job.

But even the most protected employee – the experienced worker – should have clocked that some of the benefits of working from home are illusory. Facebook is already touting the idea of pegging salary to location: if you’re choosing to work from a cheaper area, your salary may well fall accordingly. This reflects a wider question about how businesses will restructure their staffing models in the medium term: if no one is coming to the office, why does the worker need to be in London or Surrey, when people could be hired at a cheaper rate in Northern Ireland – or, for that matter, Mumbai?

Perhaps that’s no bad thing; working opportunities lost in cities are gained in rural areas or even abroad. But a nation-wide shift to home working may be the start of a far more structural shift. Many companies will have noticed during lockdown that some of their staff do not really do enough to justify being paid to work for five days a week. Why not hire freelancers instead for those tasks? This would be a serious change for those who like the benefits, pension contributions and parental leave that currently go hand-in-hand with most office jobs. Perhaps people can keep the comforts of working from home – but that comfort might no longer include job security.

The embrace of working from home may be the latest Tragedy of the Commons: workers acting in a way they think will profit them individually, while putting everyone’s livelihoods and job opportunities at risk. Those who think they have achieved the best of both worlds may be sorely mistaken. This is a pandemic, not a holiday, and there is much more pain to come – even for the office untouchables.

Kate Andrews is economics correspondent at The Spectator

Kate Andrews on Twitter @Kateandrs; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion