70% of staff say they will never go back to the office full-time

A MAJORITY of people believe that workers will never return to the office full-time after the pandemic, a major survey has found.

According to a YouGov poll for the BBC, 70 per cent of people believe that staff will ‘never return to offices at the same rate’.

Most people also say that they would prefer to work from home either full-time or at least some of the time.

But managers told the pollsters they were concerned that creativity in the workplace would be affected by extensive working from home.

Half of 530 senior leaders surveyed said that workers staying at home would adversely affect both creativity and collaboration – against just 38 per cent of the general public.

Bosses at big firms such as investment bank Goldman Sachs and tech giant Apple have rejected calls for more flexibility, with the former calling working from home an ‘aberration’.

But managers and members of the public surveyed for the BBC agreed that neither productivity nor the economy would be harmed by continuing work-from-home policies. BT’s chief executive Philip Jansen said it is planning to let most of its office workers work on-site three or four days of the week in future – although thousands of its engineers won’t be offered the same flexibility.

‘We are a people business so collaboration, dynamism, teamwork, creativity are really important to us,’ he said.

According to the research, more than three-quarters of people believe their boss will allow them to continue working from home some of the time. The proportion of workers who did at least some work from home in 2020 increased to 37 per cent, up from 27 per cent the previous year, according to the latest official figures.

More than 60 per cent of those surveyed thought young people would struggle to progress without face-to-face contact or inperson mentoring.

Half of the workers surveyed also thought that women’s careers might be boosted by home-working, with childcare duties being less of a hindrance.