Remote working should become the default in Britain, with employers legally obliged to demonstrate the need for staff to attend any particular workplace, according to the think-tank Demos.
In a report published on Monday, it makes the case for the government to pursue a move to more remote working as a means of “levelling up” poorer areas, rather than worrying about the effect of empty offices on urban centres.
The think-tank said its research had found four-fifths of the working population want to continue with some form of remote working once the pandemic is over, although not necessarily from their home. Younger people were particularly keen on having workspaces available locally.
Around half of homeworkers and a third of all respondents polled by Demos in December said they wanted to spend more money locally even after restrictions lifted — and this effect was almost as strong in rural and coastal towns as in industrial and satellite towns and more affluent places.
Remote working helps places where there are more white-collar jobs at the moment. But it’s important to say that it helps everywhere
“Homeworking is a regeneration tool, spreading the spending power of the people with the most disposable income. Let’s embrace it,” said Kitty Ussher, a former Treasury minister and chief economist at Demos.
Legislation making all jobs flexible by default would be one means to pursue this goal, she argued.
Employees already have a legal right to request flexible working, including where they work as well as in their working time. In 2019, the government committed to a consultation on making flexible working the default position unless employers could give a good reason not to allow it.
The need to attend the workplace could be made clear cut, the report said, in the case of key workers or customer-facing roles, but could also encompass the need for networking, teambuilding, creative collaboration or mentoring younger colleagues.
Demos said that while many employers were already planning for a shift to hybrid working, their needs would not always match employees’ wishes.
However, there was a broader public interest in promoting remote working to drive “levelling up” and help parents of young children or people with health conditions avoid long commutes. The report said it would also help “chip away at the stark choice between career and community for people whose homes are further away from economic centres”.
A shift to homeworking would boost affluent areas most because they have a higher share of white-collar professionals. Demos said one way to spread spending power more evenly would be to convert civic buildings in smaller, more deprived areas into remote working spaces that could be used by any civil servant. This would go further than the current policy of creating public sector “hubs” in cities such as Leeds and Darlington that were already likely to gain, Ussher said.
But she added: “Remote working helps places where there are more white-collar jobs at the moment. But it’s important to say that it helps everywhere. I don’t think the fact that the positive effects are unequally distributed in the current economic structure is a reason to be against it. ”
The report was sponsored by Legal & General, which provided forward funding for the Central Square development in Cardiff that it said could be a model for future local office space.