Analysis
By s1jobs
Research released last month by insurance brokerage Gallagher suggests that a third of employees who previously worked in offices had yet to return following the March 2020 lockdown. While this number will no doubt diminish as the months wear on, all indicators point to the continuing prevalence of working from home on at least a part-time basis.
Hybrid working benefits many people, particularly parents, carers, and those with mental or physical health needs. However, there are also concerns that remote working will have a damaging impact on women’s careers in particular.
As work-from-home orders have eased, women have not returned to the same extent as men, and when they do they are more likely to be working from home. According to Bank of England economist Catherine Mann, one of the reasons for this has been difficulty in parents accessing childcare, with women more likely to take up the slack.
“There is the potential for two tracks,” she said in November at an event for women in finance. “There’s the people who are on the virtual track and people who are on a physical track.
“And I do worry that we will see those two tracks develop, and we will pretty much know who’s going to be on which track, unfortunately.”
She wasn’t the first to highlight the risks of creating an influence gap between an office-based “in-crowd” and their more remote-based peers.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak warned younger employees in August that they risked missing out on building skills and work relationships if they stayed at home. Dr Duncan Brown, principal associate at the Institute of Employment Studies, has warned that permanent home workers will be forced off the career ladder.
READ MORE: No visible relief in latest UK job figures
These are clear risks, but the outcome is not inevitable. The key is for organisations to get better at hybrid, flexible and home working arrangements.
Instead of making office work the default, employers need to design a deliberate hybrid approach for all. This includes setting an expectation that all members of the team whose jobs allow – including senior leaders – will regularly work from home at least part of the time.
Coming to the office must also be worthwhile. Time should be spent on activities where in-person collaboration is helpful, rather than sitting at a desk with headphones on to drown out the noise.
Failure to challenge beliefs ingrained in the years prior to Covid means those who now can’t come into the office all the time will lose out, but in the long run, so will their employers.
Search the latest jobs in Scotland at s1jobs.
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