In a tough year the office will be key to getting ahead

AFTER several years of doing our jobs remotely, will 2025 be the year the nation finally gets back into the office?

- James Reed

There are signs that the working from home revolution set in train by the Covid lockdowns is already on its way out.

While it's unlikely we'll ever go back to the office fully as a nation, and WFH has undoubtedly introduced a better worklife balance for many, I believe the majority of companies will be breathing a sigh of relief. Research by my firm, Reed, indicates that business leaders have had enough of workers insisting they want to work from home most of the time.

There's little evidence that the WFH revolution, while delivering some individual benefits, has done anything to improve our poor productivity levels and I suspect it has also helped to limit economic growth. While some work dutifully from home, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of others literally putting their feet up.

At Reed, which deals with more than 30 million job applications a year, we predicted that in 2024 employers would increasingly authorise days in the office and would prioritise what we have dubbed the "inperson premium". And that has indeed come to pass.