Performance Communications | February 6, 2025
Barclays is the latest big organisation to review its flexible working policy, sending a memo to affected employees informing them that they’d be required in the office on three, rather than two, days per week. Metropolitan Police staff are striking over changes to its flexible working policy and the topic was even the subject of a recent BBC Panorama episode.
As commercial heavyweights row back on remote working practices, this represents the hottest of topics. Of course, WPP got the ball rolling with its four-days-in-the-office-per-week policy and, in the banking sector, JP Morgan has gone even further.
From a Performance Communications perspective, Barclays is playing catching up. Having experimented with various forms of two-days-in-the-office per week (flexible days, specific days and a mixture of the two) we’ve been in the office on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for more than 12 months.
In the rush to embrace working from home, it’s easy to lose sight of the benefits of being together. For example, it’s easier and faster to onboard new starters when you can put them in a busy office with their team. Whether that’s through formal training, or by the cultural osmosis that occurs when you sit next to someone and see and hear them in action, working remotely simply isn’t the same.
Let’s face it, developing your team, fostering your company culture, and the entire creative process are all much easier when you’re in the same building.
Despite this, you don’t have to scroll down your LinkedIn timeline for long to find videos and posts from vocal entrepreneurs and businesses telling other bosses to trust employees to work flexibly. Indeed, seeing another image of the famous Spotify out-of-home placement declaring it would continue to work remotely is what prompted me to begin writing this.
To suggest distrust as the main reason for companies returning to the office misses the point. It’s about placing an appropriate value on fostering the right company culture and developing the careers.
On a personal level, I’m not a massive fan of home working: too many distractions and not enough separation between home and work for me – although that probably says as much about my propensity to procrastinate as anything else. But it’s not all or nothing.
For most businesses, it’s about striking the right compromise. At Performance Communications, we’ve settled on three days in the office, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. We understand that working from home provides welcome flexibility and variety, and it allows you to spend the time and money that would otherwise be spent commuting doing something more enjoyable. But we also place a value on being together.
If anything, we’re swimming against the tide of businesses ratcheting up their time in the office. We rolled-out a policy here at the start of the year that will allow teams even more flexibility about where they work on a Monday and Friday, because we know that’s what they value – and we think we can do it without compromising either the quality of work we produce or the company culture that we care about so deeply.
Of course, companies must choose what’s right for their business but the arguments for and against are rarely as simple as they’re often portrayed to be.
Given the choice between working from an empty (and often chilly, at this time of year) home, or a thriving office where I can literally and metaphorically bounce off my colleagues, I know which I’d choose. But we’re savvy enough to realise that’s just one perspective – and that three days in is our sweet spot.
Ross Pinnock
