Fuel, food and flu may hit back-to-work drive
Staff could keep working at home so offices don’t need heating amid rising energy bills, say top civil servants
‘I hope that, through winter, people, when they are symptomatic, will recognise that and stay away’
THE drive to get staff back to the workplace could be derailed by the lorry driver shortage and rising energy prices, Cabinet sources fear.
Senior civil servants are concerned about the “resilience” of their teams if they are forced to return to the office when there are fuel or food shortages, on top of what is already going to be a difficult flu season. The source added that businesses may allow staff to continue working from home, if it means avoiding having to heat offices, or worrying about travel disruption or food.
“Depending on how bad it gets, we could have the key workers only again,” the source said, adding that in the past week management within the Civil Service had “clocked” the potential problems that lorry driver and food shortages would continue to cause, and that they “will not be forcing their teams to come into the office”.
They added that as a result it was unlikely civil servants would return to the office before January. However, Boris Johnson used his speech at the Conservative Party conference last week to urge people doing jobs from home to return to their pre-pandemic employment habits.
The Prime Minister said: “We know that a productive workforce needs that spur that only comes with face-to-face meetings and water cooler gossip.
“If young people are to learn on the job in the way that they always have and must, we will and must see people back in the office.”
Last week, Oliver Dowden, the Tory party chairman, also urged civil servants to return to work in their offices.
He said the Government ought to “lead by example” as he urged civil servants to “get back to their desks”. Jake Berry, chairman of the Northern Research Group of Tory MPS, also used the party conference to declare: “We have to end the Civil Service woke-ing from home – sorry, I mean working from home – but let’s be honest, it often is woke-ing.”
However, a top government scientist also appeared to deviate from the return to the office message. Dr Jenny Harries, the UK Health Security Agency chief executive, urged the public not to grin and bear illness this winter but instead stay away from the office if they are feeling unwell.
She told Times Radio: “Particularly as we approach the flu season for example, whereas people traditionally in the UK have sort of grinned and borne their infectious disease and then gone into work and spread it around, I’m hoping that, as we go through winter, people, when they are symptomatic, will generally recognise that and stay away and be supported to do so.”
Dr Harries added: “If everybody returned immediately to work without due consideration, it’s likely we would see more cases over a short period of time, depending on whether they were wearing face coverings, whether they were taking appropriate precautions.”
A Cabinet Office source insisted that was not a different message to the Government’s. They warned that “a lot of people” within government were not “clocking the potential dangers” of the workforce returning en masse amid the lorry driver shortage and the rise in energy bills.
They added that as a result civil servants were “extremely concerned about the cost of their own living and expensive commute into London and a very difficult, stressful period for them coming up”.