RUTH SUNDERLAND: Never returning to the office is a dangerous fantasy

Never having to go back to the office… to many of us, it sounds like a commute-free Utopia. In truth it is a dangerous fantasy that could lay waste to town and city centres and wreck our chances of future prosperity.

Yet giant investment firm Schroders is pandering so enthusiastically to its staff’s reluctance to return that it says they can work from home for ever.

Which sounds very nice for them. Much less so for the poor staff at Debenhams and other stores, whose jobs depend partly on trade from office workers.

Debenhams’ problems run far deeper than the pandemic, dating back more than a decade to a period of ownership by greedy, debt-happy private equity barons.

But the sluggishness with which Britons are returning to our workplaces could deliver the coup de grace to the famous store chain as well as the rest of the high street.

The flagship John Lewis store in Birmingham will never re-open after lockdown. WH Smith is cutting up to 1,500 jobs because there is a drought of customers at its shops in stations. More household names will certainly follow unless office workers start to breathe life into city centres once more.

The tragedy is that Britain is more than capable of reviving the economy from its Covid coma. 

As Andy Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank of England, wrote on these pages at the weekend, the foundations are in place for a rapid recovery. But we will not achieve that from our spare bedrooms.

And in the middle of this debate over what is now seen as people’s divine right to work at home, everyone seems to have forgotten about customers.

Schroders looks after more than £500billion of our pension money. What happens if its investment gurus lose their edge due to spending too much time in their gardens, away from the buzz of the City? Because if their performance does suffer, then it’s their customers, pension savers such as you and me, who will ultimately lose.

In the pandemic, the working-from-home phenomenon has had a nasty whiff of privilege about it. 

Many middle-class, middle-aged professionals with large houses and gardens and a few decades of career-building under their belt found it quite delightful and would like their lovely lockdown lifestyle to continue.

No doubt there are plenty of such people at Schroders where the average package, according to its most recent annual report, is nearly £90,000 a year.

Perhaps they don’t care that the privileged existence they crave would come at the expense of ‘lowly’ shop assistants and waiters and bar staff and others in deserted town centres.

Perhaps they don’t care about their own younger colleagues. Those still climbing the career ladder would be best placed in an office where they can find mentors, make contacts and catch the boss’s eye.

Perhaps it hasn’t dawned on them that if their employer has to make cutbacks, staff working from home risk being first in the firing line.

I am not advocating a pell-mell rush back to workplaces during the pandemic, but responsible employers – and that includes the Cabinet Office where as little as 10 per cent are back at work – should concentrate on providing a Covid-safe environment for as many staff as possible rather than taking the easy option and telling them to stay at home.

As for flexibility, I am all in favour. The traditional, macho culture of long hours and presenteeism is not great, particularly for parents and others with caring responsibilities. But a wholesale, permanent retreat from the office is certainly not the answer.

Hard-headed firms are unlikely to have been overcome by a sudden rush of benevolence towards employees – they are more likely to have an eye on the savings they can make on property and office letting fees.

We should not allow the current crisis – which we all hope and expect to be temporary – delude us into making permanent changes to the way we work. 

Particularly when those changes could blight careers and damage the economy for years to come.