UK is officially the work from home capital of Europe
Brits work from home more than any other country in Europe, in an indication that corporate return-to-office campaigns have not yet ushered workers back into the office en masse.
UK white-collar employees average 1.8 days a week WFH, compared to a global tally of 1.3 days, according to new research by King’s College London (KCL).
The data – gathered from the Global Survey of Working Arrangements – reveals that a hybrid model of working is now the dominant pattern for full-time, university-educated professionals in Europe and North America.
Globally, Canadians alone work from home more than the UK – at 1.9 days each week – with the survey looking at 16,000 workers across 40 countries.
East Asian markets such as Japan and South cut a strong cultural contrast in their attitudes to working from home, with workers on average spending at least four days in the office.
“This isn’t just a post-pandemic hangover—British workers have clearly decided they’re not going back to the old ways,” said Dr Cevat Giray Aksoy, associate professor of economics at KCL.
“Remote work has moved from being an emergency response to becoming a defining feature of the UK labour market.”
The new normal?
The data suggests that massive fluctuations in working habits, brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and disparate company policies since, have now stabilised.
Property giant British Land said last week that mid-week occupancy of its London office sites has now returned to pre-pandemic levels, more than five years since the start of the work-from-home mandate.
Dr Aksoy added: “Hybrid work is no longer the exception—it’s the expectation.”
“And importantly, we find no strong evidence that remote work comes at the cost of productivity, as many of its sceptics have feared. In fact, for many sectors, flexibility and output can go hand in hand.”
Though its proponents argue that there are few trade-offs in terms of productivity, there are growing concerns that the City’s heavily service-based economy will suffer unless office workers regularly return to the office.
In February, London Mayor Sadiq Khan warned that London “cannot afford” to be a city where “the centre has been hollowed out”.