Aviva tests part-time working in its offices

AVIVA is trialling part-time home working for staff in the latest sign that workers may never return to the office full-time following the Covid-19 lockdown.

The insurance giant has said it will start testing out how to combine home and office working when some of its staff begin returning to its offices in September.

Its pilot will take place over the next few months.

Direct Line, RSA and Legal & General have also kickstarted efforts to offer staff more choice over where they work in future.

Direct Line said it was re-assessing how to offer more days at home to staff after conducting an extensive survey on how employees feel about their working location. It has sites in Bromley, Leeds, Manchester, Ipswich and Doncaster.

RSA expects to have more remote working after it discovered staff were keen to have a more flexible work pattern. It has started a phased return to its office in Peterborough, where it has brought capacity up to 30 per cent.

Legal & General has responded to the pandemic in three stages, under the slogan ‘respond, recover, reset’. It is now in the ‘reset’ phase and intends to examine how it can improve its working practices.

The FTSE 100 firm said around a quarter of its 6,700 employees in the UK had already been allowed to routinely work away from the offices before the pandemic.

L&G said: ‘Our policy will evolve and on a pragmatic, case-by-case basis. Not all employees and locations are the same. Some key functions can only be done with an office presence, equally some employees find it difficult to work productively at home.’