Allowing people to continue to work from home once the Covid-19 pandemic passes could “shatter” the UK labour market, dent the economy and limit careers, the chief economist at fund house Toscafund Asset Management has warned.
Savvas Savouri said the economy is best served if all workers return to their traditional workplace once it is safe to do so, rather than opt for more flexible arrangements post-pandemic. “Although we have never before had our heads so much up in the clouds, we have never more needed to have our bodies together,” he said.
Writing in a new paper, Savouri said there “cannot fail to be wider economic ramifications from fewer of us attending an office hub from Monday to Friday”, including unwelcome pressures for “businesses built to serve a five-day-a-week office customer base”.
“While we can argue over the net benefit, there is no argument that our travelling to collective workplaces has been crucial in driving the UK economy forward and employment ever higher,” he said.
Savouri added: “So comfortable and complacent have many of those protected through this crisis become that they are insisting on the freedom to choose when and if they return to their old work norms.”
But many companies will be unlikely to accommodate this, Savouri noted, describing it as “pure fiction that we can return to a cottage industry economy without a deterioration in the general quality of work”.
“Those within this ‘protective bubble’ insisting on near-permanent remote-working from home will soon find the patience of their (former?) employer is quickly exhausted.
“Management will be told to reproduce at their expense the same demanding work and safety conditions provided in the original but now bereft workplace, in all remote home work areas.”
Many will offer staff an ultimatum, he predicted: moving from a full-time contract to “a casual contract reflecting your more casual approach to work”, or losing their job.
The economist also argued that encouraging younger professionals to study and then work in a way that meant they rarely interact with colleagues face-to-face will hinder their talents in years to come: “Can we really imagine looking forward 20 years or so and having a generation of senior managers who have been in virtual isolation through study and then work?”
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