British workers among most reluctant in the world to return to office working
https://www.itv.com/news/2025-03-24/british-workers-among-most-reluctant-in-the-world-to-return-to-office-working?fbclid=IwY2xjawJPwZ9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHd2_oCEAD6t37UYL9AcZdgBeS4mGfGAvjLmwUJd755uG90wX_l2g1fRPJg_aem_KeNbvRZudIqEYgrEOMqOjQ
by MoistSnow220
44 comments
I’m not surprised.
I live 15 miles from my office and my options are either:
– a 45 – 60 minute drive during rush hour (which would be made worse if more people returned to the office)
– a £14 20 minute train journey (edit: this is with a railcard that I lose next year)
So either spend up to 10 hours a week in the car or spend £70 a week on unreliable public transport, for what, to sit in a different building to do the same work? Wonderful.
If a job can be done from home, then why force them into the office.
>She added: “Lockdowns shaped a whole generation of younger workers who spent their later education and early working lives without the cultural, social and professional benefits that being with other people can bring.
“We’re now seeing a big reaction from that generation, with being in the office key to their experience of happy and fulfilling work.”
Yeah, it’s not just that though is it? It’s more likely that they don’t have suitable working space (because they often live in shared housing or with parents).
The way this article frames working from home is pretty infuriating. It makes out Britain is “behind” because UK workers don’t go into the office as much as others, and then ends with a big long quote about the supposed benefits of working in the office.
I’m old enough to have experienced office work pre and post pandemic and things are lightyears better now than they were in the past. Remote and hybrid working is actually one of the few things that has got better in a general sense in the last few years.
A number of major media outlets do seem to have it in for workers not being in the office 5 days a week, and I can only assume that it’s because they’re parroting the desired narratives of corporate sponsors….. Rather than actually writing genuine news of doing journalism.
I put in a flexible working request a few weeks ago, asking to work from home permanently, instead of the current hybrid model. My team is international – I’m the only guy on the continent of Europe.
I had to meet with HR to “officially” request the change, and to describe it. I was told the change was mandatory, but they were considering all requests.
At the end, I was asked by HR if I would consider just doing 1 day per week in the office – I told her if the company was willing to bend from 2 days to 1, it just proves how fucking arbitrary and pointless the whole thing was. She didn’t understand my point.
I enjoy my 2 days a week in the office but the train costs are extortionate
I don’t know why more companies don’t embrace it. The amount of savings they could make from the office rents would be substantial.
Commuting is legitimately shite in the UK.
This is not a surprise at all. There are people who gain a couple of hours a day with a WFH shift. Or more.
We don’t want it and if you make me go in I’ll stick a fish behind the radiator, don’t test me!!!
Makes no sense to be pushing everyone back into the office when we’re about to have a million disabled people forced into looking for work. Surely that’s the most accessible type of work for them and wouldn’t require the employers to make a load of accommodations.
As a 55 year old with 30+ years of office working and commuting I can heartily say I would never work full time or even hybrid in an office again. The answer as always though should be flexibility – , office space for those that need it, fully remote for those that don’t. It’s not a one size fits all.
Because we have congested roads and trains and buses, and sometimes it’s rainy and windy and dark, and it’s just easier to work from home as you have more control over everything.
Why waste hours on a congested commute every single day twice a day, when you could just not do that? It turns you into a zombie after a while.
I think the ideal model is hybrid working as it blends the best of both worlds.
My job can be done 100% remotely without a single complication in any aspect. Sometimes I need to go to meetings in town which is fine, but outside of that, I just need a pc and an internet connection.
For some reason though, my company thinks working from home is the devil and that’s the sad reality for most ‘older’ generation companies and owners. They don’t like change
Yet to have anyone evidence any actually benefit of being in an office – I just got promoted and wfh – go to HQ office once every 6 months – so it’s not a barrier; more down to old fart bosses stuck in the dark ages
maybe improve public transport to the point where it is reliable and cost effective again.
When I lived in a huge city abroad, my office was a 10 min walk from my apartment that cost me only 10% of my wages.
Coming back to the UK, the only affordable places I could find were a 90 min commute to the office for my new job, driving on pot hole ridden roads, single carriageways, stuck behind the 40mph only drivers, dangerous overtaking and blinding suv lights, pointless roundabout after roundabout or paying thousands a year to get on an overcrowded train that would be frequently late or cancelled.
The transport infrastructure, experience and prices in the UK are a cruel joke.
Google made $350B in 2024 but paid only 4.72% in tax on its revenue. Even on profits, its tax rate was 16.5%.
Meanwhile, the average UK worker earning £35K pays 19.7% of their salary in tax.
That means a regular person loses almost 1/5 of their income, while a trillion-dollar company pays less than 5% of what it makes.
They then expect people to drag themselves onto crowded transport and crumbling infrastructure to take more of there disposable income.
Wake up
So many reasons:
The public transport is horrendous in this country, slow, delayed, broken down, overcrowded people sitting on the floor!
With wealth inequality people are having to work in cities and commute back to more affordable locations.
You get to work and have to spend £15 on lunch
Offices aren’t equipped for modern working with lack of private space to take calls and collaborate
Good – home working should be normalised – the costs saved from home working are better than a raise in most cases. The pollution and time wasting caused by travelling is brainless. Homeworking when it is possible is like emails replacing letters – office management wanting in-office work is like them insisting upon letters over emails.
That’s because driving at rush hour in the UK is miserable. There are too many cars and the roads aren’t good enough.
We got rid of our office after all the lockdowns finished because we found out it worked just as well, now we meet up every 1/4 for a night out.
I can’t return to the office as my company no longer has one !
I was considering getting a job closer to home as the 60-90 min each way commute was getting too much. When there was an accident on the motorway, it was 3- 4 hours.
Because public transport in the UK is among the worst in the world in terms of value for money, and our train service is famously unreliable, even leaving aside the strikes.
People in the UK don’t want to effectively take a 5% pay cut and give up an extra hour of their day, what a shock?
I haven’t got an issue being in the office, I’ve got an issue with the bullshit commutes.
This article is based on a pointless survey from a property agent, so I think it’s just propaganda. The evidence is clear: people are equally or more productive out of office, and that’s all that should matter.
Regardless, is it surprising that people are reluctant to return to offices in a nation with disgustingly high public transport costs, absurd centralisation of tertiary service work in a single city, outrageous property prices in said city, and disgracefully expensive childcare options?
We have no right to switch off, next to no money, terrible roads/rail, and – for absolutely no clear reason – we are being forced back into shitty offices with windows that won’t open and colleagues we don’t really like.
Fuck offices. Let me do my bloody job and stop trying to own me.
Is this a shock? It took me three hours to get to work yesterday due to traffic, and another hour and fifty minutes to get home. I sat in an office with no one from my team because we’re scattered throughout the country.
Today I started at 7 and worked until just before 5, from home and got a lot more done.
Not only is home/hybrid working better for workers, surely it’s better for bosses in terms of output, morale, and costs (they can rent smaller buildings, heating bills reduce etc).
The only reason they want people back in the office here is because of the empty real estate losing value, they must protect the investment banks first and foremost.
It’s because commuting is fucking rubbish in the UK. I work less than 10 miles from work. There’s a train station at work and one 10 minutes walk from my house but I still can’t use the train, because it’s cancelled or insanely delayed 10 percent of the time. Which, when I have to be back at a defined time to pick the kids up from after school club, is no use at all.
So I drive. Which takes 40 minutes because of all the other people also driving to/from work.
Yes, I could cycle. But there’s no cycle lanes apart from the last half mile and I’d rather live.
It’s going to be so hard to explain to my kids that, before COVID, I used to drive to a different building to use a different computer from my one at home.
There’s a housing shortage. I don’t need a separate building to work from. My boss lives in Kentucky, she doesn’t care where I am so long as the work is done.
Yeah fuck off with that noise. My job alerts are set to permenant remote/hyrbid.
Because we’re not buying the bullshit for a change. Even the news articles frame it as negative. The headline should be ‘British workers leading the fight against unnecessary return to the office’
The rich want us in so the media and government will follow, simple as that.
For the last year my job was 3 days home 2 days office. After a year and from April 2025, we are returning to full-time work from home, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Going to a different building to sit in a room to do the same thing I can do from my home, which I’m already doing and working from, is not clever business. Let me work in peace and comfort, and I’ll do my best for you.
Also the sickest, bear in mind. Treating us would solve many problems….
Yeah sod that £25 train + £13 parking.
I deal with business from all over the UK, I’m going to sit on Teams all day and piss off everyone around me.
What’s this, another hit piece on remote working paid for by big business, who don’t want to see their soulless offices go empty?
I’m freelance and moved to Devon last year, I’ve lost a fair bit of work due to not being in London anymore but I wouldn’t trade a fucking thing. If I can even scrape by here, it’s still miles better than going back.
The irony is, I think that if the UK embraced remote working we could solve a number of issues – namely reducing house prices in London and actually making it liveable again, then having more money invested across the UK via remote workers who put back into local economies.
Please let people work from home if they can. I long for bank holidays when the motorway at 830am isn’t just a mile long stretch of carpark.
I have worked from home for 10 years now. In a truly ideal world I wouldn’t need to see/speak to/interact with a single human being ever.
If they ever tried to make me work from an office I would just quit on the spot
So you can work from home or drive an hour busting the cars springs or try and get on non existent train/bus routes at prices that would make satan scream at the injustice of it, sit at a desk to video conference people (probably in the same office) or do computer based training. All so someone can get a backhander for filling a totally unnecessary office block?
Maybe that’s because we know how bloody stupid it is. I really don’t get why a company would spend millions on office accommodation that COVID proved they don’t need.
I’d happily go into the office every day if the train wasn’t late every single day – I’m literally paying a ridiculous amount to be late to my job constantly and have to stay until 6pm then for the train home to be delayed too. I do 2 days at home at a week which I’m not a fan of because I prefer being around people but I also don’t want to be stuck at work until 6pm then getting home at 7pm everyday when I don’t really need to.
I spent £45 commuting into London yesterday. Thank God I only do it once a week.
Probably among the most expensive countries in the world to return to office working
The only people pushing for going back to offices are managers that are best in standing behind people’s shoulders and looking at what they’re doing. They feel their jobs are threatened if there are no people to manage. Some people probably need to be pushed to work but this can be established during the first couple of months and decided if a person can work from home. I save time and environment, create less traffic, have more time for family while at the same time being more productive while working from home due to not having office distractions and flexible hours if need to. On the other hand, office gossip and socialisation is something I’m missing.
To be honest, when I do go to the office, I do fuck all.
Have a wander around, chat a bit, have some coffee, do some life admin’, go out for lunch and then go home.
Mind, there is a difference in WFH crouched over a kitchen table in an inner city flat fielding calls to sitting in a study in a converted barn on the edge of middle class market town.
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