Amazon says workers need to be in the office. UK government disagrees. Who’s right?

These are two conflicting views on where office workers work best.

Amazon has ordered its employees to return to the office five days a week as the government pushes to strengthen flexible working rights, including remote working.

The tech giant says employees will be better able to “invent, collaborate, and stay connected.”

But as soon as the company’s news broke, the UK government began linking flexibility with better outcomes and a more productive, loyal workforce.

Few people have a firm view of how effective working from home is, and there are wider issues for the government to consider, such as how remote working affects caring responsibilities.

But what does the evidence tell us, four years into the pandemic, about how we work best, and is Amazon right to think that people working in an office full time will be able to collaborate better?

Amazon’s fellow tech giant Microsoft has been studying its workforce during the pandemic, looking at the emails, calendars, instant messages and calls of 61,000 of its U.S. employees during the first six months of 2020. The research results were published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

The study found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, remote workers were more likely to collaborate with the networks of colleagues they already had and that they were building fewer “bridges” between different networks.

Real-time communication also declined – meetings that would have taken place in real life were not necessarily held online. Instead, more emails and instant messages were sent.

The authors suggested that this may make it difficult to convey and understand complex information.

Microsoft’s study was data-driven. But what about the human experience?

Research conducted in 2020 by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) of 1,000 senior decision-makers in organisations found that around one-third of them struggled with “limited staff interaction and collaboration”.

However, more than 40% of managers said collaboration was better when employees worked from home.

It is hard to argue against greater collaboration, but at the same time it is not a guarantee of productivity.

In 2010, China’s largest travel agency CTrip introduced something completely new among its airline and hotel reservation staff.

Around 250 employees were identified as potential home workers – they had to be settled in the company and have appropriate conditions for working from home.

About half of that group began working from home. The other group stayed in the office.

Researchers from Stanford University found that employees were 13% more productive when they worked from home. – mainly because employees had fewer breaks and sick days, and were able to answer more phone calls because it was quieter.

Particularly significant declines in departures were seen among non-managerial workers, women and long-distance commuters, the researchers found.

But these Chinese home workers did see a bit of the office: They spent one day a week among colleagues. That may have had some benefits—a separate study years later by Stanford researchers suggested that fully remote working could lead to a 10% drop in productivity compared with working in an office full time.

The reasons given included communication barriers, lack of mentoring for employees, problems with building a work culture and difficulties with self-motivation.

Amazon isn’t the only company encouraging its employees to return to the office full-time.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon famously described remote work as an “aberration.” The American firm requires bankers to be in the office five days a week.

Rival US banks JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley have also backed returning workers to offices, while some banks in Europe have taken a more lenient approach.

Elon Musk’s Tesla also requires its employees to be in the office at all times, and there have been reports of problems finding space for them.

Musk’s other company, SpaceX, has implemented a policy requiring employees to return to the office full time.

But it was not without consequences: after the introduction of this policy, SpaceX lost 15% of its senior employees, according to a study published earlier this year.

The pandemic has changed routine work procedures that, in many cases, had been in place for decades.

Linda Noble, now 62, from Barnsley, has become accustomed to putting on a suit and make-up. In 2020, she was a senior civil servant in local government, overseeing management of the fire and police services.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and she had to work from home.

“I hated it. I missed the communication—going to work, someone would make you smile,” she says.

But over time, Ms. Noble adapted. She set up a home office and believes she was soon twice as productive as before — even if that was partly due to an inability to switch off.

Many people with disabilities also find that working from home increases their productivity.

2023 study of 400 people said disabled employees felt they had more autonomy and control when working from home, which allowed them to take better care of their health and well-being, and 85% felt more productive.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, not all studies reach the same conclusions. Some suggest that working from home can improve physical health, while others disagree. The same is true for mental health.

Employee wellbeing was a key reason why a UK company decided to allow them to return to the office as soon as possible after the end of lockdown restrictions, according to company director Francis Ashcroft.

He was the chief executive of a large private British childcare company. He says that “some people were struggling with heightened levels of anxiety” and wanted to get back into the office “to be part of the team”.

Mr Ashcroft added that it was also noted that 80% of staff were “on the frontline”, working face-to-face in children’s homes and educational settings, and therefore it was “right to return” for fairness reasons.

He says that although team members were collaborating online at 95% of what they had been doing before, “returning to the office gave them an additional 5% of work.”

“It brought authenticity and a sense of belonging,” says Mr Ashcroft, adding that “in terms of service delivery, the teamwork in the office was much better.”

Despite this experience, umbrella review Working from Home, which analysed a number of other studies, found that, overall, working from home increases the number of tasks that employees can complete.

The difference in approach between the government and Amazon basically comes down to whether remote work should be part of the policy, and Amazon believes it shouldn’t.

Linda Noble’s time working exclusively from home is over. She’s about to embark on a hybrid work plan. She’s drawn to the “balance” between working from home and working in the office.

According to the CIPD, the benefits of hybrid working include “better work-life balance, greater ability to focus with fewer distractions, more time for family and friends and wellbeing activities, savings on commuting time and costs, and higher levels of motivation and engagement.”

And it can help reduce staff turnover. A study published this year It was found that in a Chinese company that introduced a hybrid work model, the employee attrition rate dropped by one third.

From an employee’s perspective, the optimal time for hybrid work is three days in the office – according to him, this is when employees are most engaged Gallup survey workers in the U.S., although the document also notes that “there is no one-size-fits-all solution.”

In the UK, the number of people working exclusively from home is falling. But crucially, hybrid working is still growing, accounting for 27% of the working population.

Gallup says that despite much-publicized moves by companies to get workers back into the office, the underlying trend is that the future of office work will be hybrid.

This is in line with the UK Government’s position, which clearly believes that the ability to work from home increases productivity.

Amazon’s calculations apparently indicate that the evidence of increased productivity for employees who work partly from home does not reflect the specifics of how they function.

BBC in detail is the new home on the website and in the app for the best analysis and expertise from our best journalists. Under a distinctive new brand, we’ll bring you fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions, and in-depth reporting on the biggest issues to help you make sense of the complex world. We’ll also feature thought-provoking content from BBC Sounds and iPlayer. We’re starting small but thinking big and we want to hear from you – you can send us your feedback by clicking the button below.