Bosses must offer workers more than just snacks to tempt us back to the office

USUALLY, I do not tangle with pronouncements by the editor of a paper I write for. Call it the instinct of columnist self preservation. Still, a blast this week by this paper's Dylan Jones enjoining workfrom-homers to get back to the office - citing the perils of emptying out the capital's restaurants, clubs and shops - rang a bell.

- Anne McElvoy

I have also just spent some time in New York, to find the office-scapes I had associated with buzzy activity looked like the opening episodes of the brilliant dystopian drama Severance. Vast corridors of white space, coffee machines harbouring ancient UHT milk and piles of free snacks awaited.

Actual people: not so much. "Basically," confided a co-snacker. "We come for the food and then go home." Surely this must be different in the pulsating financial district back home - the dog-eats-bonus world of the Square Mile? I call a friend who heads a top M&A outfit in the City. "Don't even ask," he says edgily. "If we incentivise coming back, we disincentivise anyone who stays home. Legally, it's a minefield." So I tweeted my carefully moderated view of the Jonesian requirement namely that companies need to figure out a firmer idea of what the capsule week should look like, instead of pussyfooting around and deploying Nespresso and bad wine as ineffectual reasons to return.