The government has set up a task force to draw up advice on flexible employment as working from home, for at least a part of the week, could become a permanent feature after the pandemic.
Twenty business groups and trade unions will begin a review of hybrid working, where employees spend some of their week at home and some in a workplace. The task force’s membership will include the CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses, Age UK and the Trades Union Congress. They will consider how the government and businesses can support the change brought about by the pandemic, as well as whether more could be done to promote informal flexible working arrangements. Some are understood to want a simple legal right to work from home.
However, attitudes amongst workers are subject to change as the trend goes on for longer and people miss the routine of their work schedules; the number of people who want to work from home for good has declined since the third lockdown. Now only a quarter of workers want to work mostly or completely from home compared with a third who want to work mostly or completely from the office – a fall from last year when that figure was one half.