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Apple Employees Demand More Flexibility For Company's Return To Office Plan

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The end of remote work Firms look to punish remote workers

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Free parking and changes to managers' bonuses have helped Britain's biggest insurer, Aviva, lure staff back to their desks for most of the working week.

Welcome to the new-old world of work: where companies, particularly those in financial services and technology, push for staff to spend more days in the office as they try to rebalance the working from home trend.

Aviva is one of a growing number of banks, insurers and fund managers trying to bring workers back for at least half, if not most of the working week, long after enforced working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic ended.

There has also been a big drive to get staff back in the office in the technology sector, where companies including Google, Amazon and Meta have ordered employees back to their desks for most of the working week.

Aviva allows its 16,000 UK staff to split their time equally between home and the office but reported that the number of people who came in to the office had gone up every month this year. At the same time, it said there had been a reduction in the number of days taken off because of mental health problems.

Aviva said the number of people who came in to the office had risen every month this year. Photograph: Alishia Abodunde/Reuters

The shift happened after the Aviva chief executive, Amanda Blanc, decided to include senior managers' ability to get their teams back into the office in their end of year performance assessment, on which bonuses would be based.

Danielle Harmer, the chief people officer at Aviva, said: "The majority of our people are now back in the office for the majority of the week. Our colleagues clearly value working side by side, collaborating and meeting regularly in person, and this experience is leading more to come back, more often."

Aviva has also dropped its parking charges in Norwich, Birmingham, Sheffield and its other sites in the UK, with the exception of London, to help staff with the rising cost of living and encourage their return to the office.

This mirrors changing working patterns elsewhere in the City. "There is an underlying trend towards a greater number of your working days being in the office rather than remotely ... across insurance, asset management, banking, the US and the UK," said Bruce Carnegie-Brown, the chair of Lloyd's of London, the world's biggest insurance market.

He said he wanted to see people working in the Lloyd's building in the City at least three days a week - and not just Tuesday to Thursday - to avoid a situation where people were taking "long weekends" every week, as he worried that Mondays and Fridays were not properly covered for clients.

Lloyd's of London is revamping its underwriting room and wants insurers' staff to be present on the ground floor. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Lloyd's closed its underwriting room last month to revamp it, installing better technology, seating and lighting, and will reopen it next week. As part of the changes, Carnegie-Brown wants representatives from all 85 insurers that are members of the market to be present throughout the week on the main ground floor.

This should make the main floor "much busier and buzzier", although he added: "Hybrid working will continue. I don't believe we will return to five days of working in the office", apart from certain roles.

Similarly, HSBC has told its 24,000 staff in the UK that it wants them in the office three days a week. A spokesperson said: "We have been clear from the outset that hybrid working would evolve to ensure we are serving our customers in the right way. From October, hybrid working at HSBC UK will mean colleagues spending typically three days a week in an office or with clients."

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The London-based fund manager M&G, which was spun off from the insurer Prudential four years ago, said it expected its senior staff to spend an average of three days a week in the office so they can be with their team and clients.

Lloyds Banking Group has been offering free hot rolls, fruit and drinks in some of its offices to attract staff back and has asked them to come in at least two days a week.

Collaborating effectively "is difficult, if a team are below strength on certain days of the week, or if some key people are only available at times when the majority are not", the bank's chief executive, Charlie Nunn, told staff in July.

Citigroup has reportedly started monitoring the office attendance of its 12,500 UK staff. Photograph: Kevin Coombs/Reuters

By contrast, other firms such as NatWest Group and the car insurer Admiral do not mandate days in the office. NatWest said its staff were spending one or two days in the office, on average.

Citigroup, the US bank, has reportedly started monitoring the office attendance of its 12,500 UK staff, most of them in its Canary Wharf headquarters, who are expected to come in at least three days a week. A memo, seen by Bloomberg News, said: "One swipe per person, per day, per location will be captured. The focus of the reports will be employees with consistent office absences." This could affect their bonuses or even lead to them being sacked.

But perhaps the strongest backlash against homeworking has come from the very tech companies that benefited from the working from home boom.

The Amazon chief executive, Andy Jassy, told US staff last month that "it's probably not going to work out for them" unless they came in at least three days a week.

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Free food and threats to bonuses: UK finance and tech firms fight working from home

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Banks and insurers join Google, Amazon and Meta in encouraging staff to spend most of week in office

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There is more to working from home than skipping the traffic and getting to wear pyjamas all day. In fact, for a lot of people it's becoming the new normal.

According to a recent report, 12.7% of full-time employees in the US are now working from home, with another 28.2% enjoying a mix of home and office work. This shift is far from temporary - it's expected to nearly triple compared to what it was before the pandemic.

But what does all this mean for our cities and our planet? It's not just about changing how our cities look and feel; it could be a big step toward a cleaner, more eco-friendly future. Want to know what doing Zoom calls in your living room (or wherever you like to work) means for the Earth? Let's look at how this trend is affecting our planet, and how it can make changes for the better.

Reduction in commuting

Since the pandemic lockdowns, people all over the world have been working from home more, saving fuel by not driving to work every day. At the height of the pandemic, long distance travel also took a big hit, as activities such as commercial flights dropped by half compared to before. This 50% cut in global travel and commercial flights was massively beneficial for the environment.

Evidently, by using less fuel, fewer greenhouse gases are released into the air. That means less smog and pollution, leading to cleaner air for all of us to breathe. The lockdown, when the change was sudden and extreme, showed how strong the impact of limited travel can be. However, it amounted to little more than giving the Earth a short break, as the effects did not last long enough to have a meaningful impact on climate change.

Rush hour traffic jams are another, much maligned part of many people's lives, and working from home helps with that, too. Less traffic means fewer car engines running and polluting the air we breathe. This means that towns and cities become less crowded, and the air in them is cleaner.

However, an obvious issue such as traffic has ramifications that illustrate how profound and complex this issue is: with fewer people driving, roads and public transportation do not wear out as quickly. That means less work fixing them and fewer natural resources used to make those repairs, or to build new roads. The environmental impact of this is huge, and perhaps not obvious at first glance.

Remote work is not just changing work; it is changing the way we live and the way we think about our planet.

Energy Consumption

Do you ever wonder about how much energy we use when working from home? This is not an easy question to answer. Of course, staying at home might push your energy bills up because of extra heating or cooling and using your computer more. Studies have shown an increase of anything from 7 to 23%. But there is another side to this story.

Think about big office buildings with all their lights, air conditioning, and machines. These workplaces use a lot of power, and with more people working from home, many of these buildings are using less energy, especially during the busiest times of the day.

Also, working from home gives people more control over how they use energy. This means they can choose to install solar panels or energy-saving appliances, or that they are simply more careful about turning off lights and devices when they are not in use. Combined with offices using less power, this could really help to cut down on overall energy use and, as a consequence, pollution.

Working from home is changing how we think about energy. It has the potential to help us all connect our daily lives, as individuals and as a society, to the bigger picture of taking care of our planet.

Urban Planning and Sustainability

Remote work also allows us to reshape our cities and towns. Imagine how the way we build and plan communities might change if people were able to work where they live. It is leading to a new way of thinking about where we live, as people move away from crowded city centres and spread out more evenly.

This means that towns, suburbs, and even rural areas need to get ready for new ways of living. They have to plan for things like where people will live, where they can catch a bus or train, and where they can enjoy some fresh air in parks. And this all has to be done in a way that is carefully planned and has a limited environmental impact.

Working from home can also help us to can do more in our own neighbourhoods. If we can work, shop, and socialise with friends nearby, it means that our community bonds can become closer and stronger.

Remote work is opening the door to new ideas for how we build our communities, with a focus on being smart and sustainable. It provides a chance to build places to live that are more in tune with the way we want to live our lives.

Conclusion

The impact of working from home goes far beyond just escaping the classroom or office; it is having a massive impact on our planet. It is changing how our cities and towns look and feel, making them more friendly to the environment.

But there is a catch: we have to be smart. We need to find creative solutions and really commit to living and working in a way that helps our planet. That means thinking carefully about how we use energy, how we get around, and how we build our homes and communities.

So the question now is: how are we going to make the most of this chance to make the world a better place?

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Remote work marks the path to a greener future

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Working from home is more than avoiding traffic; it's reshaping cities and saving the planet. Discover how this trend impacts your world.

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The shift to working from home will be difficult to reverse

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The biggest obstacle to getting everyone back into the workplace is the fact that people who are working from home seem to be doing better — or at least no worse — than those who are not.