Will coronavirus spell the end of the traditional office working space?

Linda J. Dodson

Caution risks turning into aversion and companies cutting out the office, accelerating a pre-existing shift towards more flexible working to benefit family life. Germany is planning to bring in a right to work from home law, in a sign of a change of attitudes sweeping the globe.

“The notion of putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past,” said Jes Staley, the chief executive of Barclays, which has vast offices next to rivals in Canary Wharf, speaking last week after announcing the group’s financial results. “There will be a long-term adjustment in how we think about our location strategy.”

In remarks likely to ring alarm bells among landlords, several bosses echoed his thoughts in comments to The Telegraph. “I have no doubt that when everyone is back to work there will be more people working from home,” says Mark Read, the boss of advertising giant WPP, which globally employs 107,000.

Lord Wolfson, the chief executive of Next, said: “All of us, myself included, have learnt that there is work that can effectively be done from home. My guess is that working practices will change irreversibly going forward one way or another.” For the first time, some of the work Next does from call centres is even being done from home.

Vodafone UK boss Nick Jeffery said: “In just a few weeks we enabled more than 90pc of our 11,000 employees to work from home. We’ve proved that our network supports home working on a mass-scale. The last couple of months has required us all to rethink the design and purpose of our offices.” Pascal Soriot, chief executive of the pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca, is also considering more home working for his team.

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