Sunak’s plea to get workers back in the office is galling
Instead of lecturing young staff, the Government should try to fix our abysmal transport system
Rishi Sunak popped up yet again this week with one of his now regular exhortations for workers to return to the office. This time his specific target was young people. The Chancellor told them working alongside their colleagues would be “really beneficial” to their careers.
His intervention isn’t quite as asinine as that made by the Government last August, when ministers warned working from home would make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked (before, of course, Covid cases began to rise again in September and the country was plunged back into another lockdown).
But it comes a close second. Young people already know that they will learn faster by working alongside others. Many have spent the past few months in cramped flatshares. Surveys show they are the cohort that’s keenest to return to the workplace.
In fact, Sunak’s entreaties are quintuply galling. Not only is it condescending, there’s the barely concealed agenda: the Chancellor is worried about all the revenue the Treasury is missing out on as much of the nation continues to work from home. And how about the hypocrisy?
Just one in five civil servants are back in the office, a lower rate than in the private sector, despite the Government claiming that it was “leading by example”. What’s more, do we really want the state dictating how and where people work? Many would argue the Government has, by necessity, had quite enough say over how we live our lives in the past 18 months. A period of silence on its part would be welcome.
And, lastly, Sunak is actually in a position to address the main impediment to people returning to the office but has, as yet, shown very little inclination to do so. In fairness to the Chancellor, he’s not the only one that is choosing to ignore the obvious.
I was recently at an event where bosses discussed getting staff to return to the office. Some were sanguine about flexible working, some less so. They discussed various tactics to lure staff back mostly around reconfiguring their offices to make them more appealing. Not one mentioned the thing that people hate most about the office: travelling to and from it.
It’s clear there’s a huge mismatch of expectations between employers and employees. A newly published Yougov survey shows that three-quarters of whose jobs can theoretically be done from home would prefer a hybrid model; just 9pc want a return to the old nine-to-five office routine.
The popularity of working from home is highest among those who live furthest from their office; among white collar workers who want to work from home most or all of the time, nearly two-thirds said their commute was too long, according to another Yougov poll. Other surveys consistently show that employers want their staff in the office far more frequently but are not prepared to offer the obvious carrot to get them back. Nearly 63pc of employees would be more inclined to work for an employer that offered help with the commute but only 16pc of companies say they are likely to do so, according to a survey conducted by transport technology firm Kura.
Are staff right to be asking their companies to help pick up the tab for the commute? One survey found that Londoners wanted an average of £5,100 to return to the office full time. It seems a bit cheeky to ask for a pay hike simply to return to how things were before the pandemic. On the flip side, many employees say at least some of the time they saved not commuting has been used to work longer hours than before lockdown.
How this all shakes out will likely depend on the strength of the jobs market. And the fact that the UK currently has a record number of vacancies suggests it is employees who have the whip hand.
You can see why they would use their bargaining power to lessen the financial burden or frequency of their commute – a form of living purgatory whose unrelenting tediousness is all too frequently broken by moments of fist-chewing frustration. Studies have long shown it makes people unhappy and anxious, with a journey time of between an hour and 90 minutes the most likely to crush the soul.
Commuters leave home early and get back late, missing time with their family. Trains, tubes and buses have poor or no internet and are frequently overcrowded meaning there is often little chance of a seat let alone the opportunity to open a laptop. Those who drive also can’t work, meaning this is often dead time. Public transport is unreliable. No one can claim to have witnessed true fury until they have seen a trainload of frazzled commuters being dumped at a rural station on a February evening because the service has been terminated without explanation. And, what’s more, heaping aggravation atop indignity, it’s eye-wateringly expensive.
Much of the blame for this can be placed at the door of the Government. There has been underinvestment in the transport infrastructure for decades. When it does get the chequebook out, it’s for shiny big white elephants like HS2, the money for which could be better spent on improving heavy commuter routes – both rail and roads – and therefore marginally improving the lives and productivity of far more people.
There was a huge missed opportunity with the new flexible tickets aimed at commuters in England. Part of the Government’s shake-up of rail services, they were launched last month to cater for the increase in hybrid working. But the new tickets are overly complicated, the savings are negligible and the system is the very antithesis of flexibility. They’re only worth considering for those who are sure they are going to travel two days a week and no more.
In fact they actively discourage commuters to randomly pop into the office on odd days and therefore undermine the Chancellor’s express wishes. One thing’s for sure, unless the Government and employers get more creative, anyone hoping for a return to pre-pandemic working patterns is going to become as frustrated as those waiting for the 07:16 Southern service from East Grinstead to London Bridge.