The former boss of Marks & Spencer and most recently Asda has criticised flexible working, saying it is creating a generation who are “not doing proper work”.
Speaking to Panorama, Lord Stuart Rose blamed the post-pandemic practice of staff continuing to work at least part-time from home for the UK economy’s “general decline” and said employees’ productivity was suffering.
Rose, who stepped down as executive chair of Asda last year, said: “We have regressed in this country in terms of working practices, productivity and in terms of the country’s wellbeing, I think, by 20 years in the last four.”
Rose’s comments come as many large corporations are looking to end working from home, with the likes of Amazon, Boots and JP Morgan just some of the businesses around the world calling for head office staff to come in every day.
In December, the Office for National Statistics found that 26% of UK adults said they had been hybrid-working in the last week, while 13% had been fully remote and 41% had been fully office-based.
Working from home is also becoming a major battleground in the ongoing culture wars. The Labour government is currently legislating to strengthen the rights of employees across the UK when it comes to working from home, saying it intends to make such requests harder for employers to reject.
However, some employers and government bodies are trying to force staff back into the office, arguing that face-to-face interaction is an essential part of collaborative working.
Employment rights minister Justin Madders told Panorama there was a body of evidence to show that working from home was more productive, allowing companies to grow with a “much more motivated workforce”.
“If we’re able to get more people into work because flexibility is available for them,” he said. “That will help us reach our growth ambitions”.
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