The boss of a big commercial law firm says Boris Johnson is wrong to say working from home is no good for business.
Shakespeare Martineau chief executive Sarah Walker-Smith said the PM and people like Apprentice host Lord Alan Sugar were misguided to suggest staff working from home were less productive and lazier.
Their “archaic” ideas, she said, came right out of the 1970s.
Ms Walker-Smith said she shared concerns about the economic impact of less footfall in city centres, but said to “suggest we go backwards is not the solution”.
Last weekend the PM said there were too many distractions for home working to be any good.
Arguing that the UK needs to get back into the habit of office life he said: “My experience of working from home is you spend an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee and then, you know, getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, hacking off a small piece of cheese, then walking very slowly back to your laptop and then forgetting what it was you’re doing.”
That came a few weeks after Brexit and government efficiency minister Jacob Rees-Mogg was branded condescending for leaving notes on civil servants’ desks saying he wanted to see them back in the office “very soon”.
Meanwhile Apprentice host Lord Sugar tweeted: “The lazy gits make me sick. Call me old fashioned but all this work from home BS is a total joke. There is no way people work as hard or productive as when they had to turn up at a work location.”
Ms Walker-Smith is the chief executive of Shakespeare Martineau and its parent group Ampa, which also takes in the Marrons Planning consultancy, Lime solicitors and Corclaim, a national law firm specialising in recovering debts, assets and goods.
Shakespeare Martineau alone employs more than 900 people from its Birmingham headquarters and offices in Leicester, London, Lincoln, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Sheffield, Solihull, Stratford upon Avon and Glasgow.
Commenting from her home office on Linked In she said: “Please don’t tell us we’re lazy when we work from home. It’s not relevant and it’s simply ridiculous, and it shows how completely out of touch you are.
“My particular view is that productivity has gone up because we now have the flexibility for people to work how they need to work to fit their jobs around their busy lives.
“When we had the traditional old fashioned culture of presenteeism, and people were expected to sit at their desks for many, many hours a day in an office, it drove people out of the workforce – people who have other things they need to balance in their lives.
“People who have caring commitments. People who can’t afford an hour-and-a-half commute every day to get to the city of London, or even longer.
“The pandemic has given us a unique opportunity to open up our working practices and therefore allow more people to stay in the workforce and come into the workforce doing jobs they couldn’t have otherwise done.
“So the views of Lord Sugar and Boris Johnson are simply not relevant any more.
“We know what they are doing. They are trying to drive headline-grabbing, controversial statements which may appeal to a certain demographic.
“The real debate we should be having is how do we get the balance right, to keep people working together, building relationships, collaborating, driving innovation and protecting people’s mental health.
“The simple way to ensure people are being productive is to treat them as adults, build loyalty and reward their outputs and outcomes.
“In our experience (with our empowered working philosophy), we find most people work well at home because they can manage it around the other aspects of their life.
“And if you don’t trust your people to do so, something has gone very wrong and frankly you have bigger problems to fix.
“Balance that with the buzz of fantastic collaboration that we get when they also come into our hubs each week, and we (and they) get the best of both – a way of working that suits each individual to work from wherever they are most productive at the times they are most productive.
“The perfect solution.
“Let business help fix the city centre problem; work with us to do so. We don’t tell you how to run the country.
“Please don’t tell us how to run our businesses to drive productivity. Funnily enough that’s something we will achieve without having to be told.
“Please, PM, do not continue to undermine this silver lining that’s emerged from the pandemic – enabling productivity from all talent to drive growth.
“To do so will simply serve to re-enforce how out of touch you are.”
