The owner of the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express and Daily Star newspapers has told its journalists that most of them will work from home permanently after the coronavirus pandemic.
Reach, which also owns hundreds of regional newspapers in the UK and Ireland including the Manchester Evening News, will no longer expect around three-quarters of its staff to come to the office full-time.
The company will close its 10 Lower Thames Street office in the City of London and reduce its headquarters at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf (pictured), from two floors to one. Further afield, it will consolidate its regional offices to 14 city hubs across the UK and Ireland, meaning that scores of towns will lose their only remaining newsrooms.
Reach’s decision to abandon a traditional office model follows a survey of its employees, which it says indicated that “a majority” found that homeworking suited their needs.
A spokesperson said: “Moving forward, colleagues will either be home-based or working mainly from home, with around a quarter office-based, working from one of our 15 hubs around the country [including Canary Wharf]. This solution provides increased flexibility, with the ability to have access to meeting space to recapture face-to-face collaboration and a social element – when lockdown rules allow.”
The news was first reported by City AM.
Media organisations have been among the worst hit by the pandemic, but Reach is the only major example of moving to a predominantly homeworking model. The company has already cut 550 jobs after lockdown caused advertising revenue to drop by one-sixth in the second half of last year.
Its remaining city hubs will be in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Dublin, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Greater Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Plymouth and an office in the South East.
The confirmation comes after British Airways, another company at the top of one of the UK’s hardest-hit industries, announced that it was considering downsizing its offices near Heathrow airport as it moves to a hybrid working model.
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