The danger of the work from home revolution

The work-from-home (WFH) revolution has clearly won hearts and minds. According to KPMG and the Financial Services Skills Commission, half of UK finance workers want to WFH after Covid-19, with around one-quarter wishing to make the switch full-time. Unilever CEO Alan Jope said his workers will not return to their desks five days a week. Morgan Stanley predicts 30 per cent of American workers will continue to work from home. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg estimates half of staff will permanently embrace remote work, with the company ‘aggressively opening up remote hiring’.

But without mitigating strategies in place, the shock therapy of the work-from-home revolution could end up destroying any hope of a great British economic comeback. If millions of us remain reluctant to flood back into workplaces and urban areas, the impact could be catastrophic for sectors banking on commuters and consumers returning in droves. What compounds the risk is that in the spider’s web of our economy, companies in the most ‘at-risk’ sectors employ the services of firms most likely to have embraced home-working.