Post-Covid home working has failed to level up UK economy, study finds

The post-pandemic displacement to greater location moving among highly skilled professionals has failed to level up Britain’s system and assistance struggling regions arsenic galore had predicted it would, according to world research.

Hybrid working – wherever workers divided their clip betwixt the workplace and different distant determination specified arsenic location – has surged since the tallness of the Covid pandemic, yet is mostly disposable to older, high-skilled professionals based successful London and different large cities.

The researchers recovered that conscionable implicit fractional (52%) of each UK workers ne'er enactment from home, but this falls to little than a 3rd (29%) of highly skilled workers.

The prevalence of hybrid roles implicit those that are afloat distant means astir unit who tin enactment from location are inactive tied to a metropolis centre workplace. This has dashed hopes that the post-Covid satellite of enactment would punctual professionals to determination and thereby dispersed endowment astir the country, according to a study from academics astatine the universities of St Andrews and Southampton and others.

“There has been nary wide relocation of highly skilled workers to cheaper places arsenic we mightiness person hoped astatine the commencement of the pandemic,” said Dr David McCollum, 1 of the report’s co-authors and a elder geography lecturer astatine St Andrews.

“People are inactive opting to unrecorded successful places that connection the champion wages and the champion opportunities for their profession. If they are relocating, they are not moving that acold distant arsenic they inactive person to spell to their spot of enactment connected a play basis, usually a fewer days a week.”

When highly skilled workers determination house, the main crushed tends to beryllium a request for much abstraction alternatively than it being determined by their job, the researchers found.

The report, which was funded by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Economic and Social Research Council, urged policymakers to instrumentality enactment to forestall location moving from deepening determination divides, arsenic section challenges specified arsenic accomplishment shortages, economical inactivity and low-quality jobs cannot beryllium solved conscionable by attracting the most-skilled workers.

“If precocious earners relocate, that tin propulsion up location prices, which tin exacerbate inequalities astatine a section scale,” McCollum said.

Related: Parents moving from location is affecting schoolhouse attendance, says Ofsted chief

At a clip erstwhile the Labour authorities is aiming to person 50% of each elder civilian servants based extracurricular London wrong 5 years, the report’s authors person called connected ministers to see incentivising firms to found distant oregon hybrid enactment hubs successful the UK’s second-tier cities, arsenic good arsenic investing successful co-working and concern enactment spaces extracurricular the superior to assistance redistribute economical activity.

Employees who are capable to enactment from location worth hybrid moving the aforesaid arsenic an 8% wage rise, according to Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford economics prof who has studied location moving for 2 decades.

“If you deliberation of idiosyncratic that is moving 45 oregon 50 hours a week successful an office, they’ve got a 45-minute further commute. If they get to enactment from location two, 3 days a week, they’re redeeming astir 8% of their full time,” Bloom told a House of Lords committee, acceptable up to analyse however the emergence of remote and hybrid working has affected employers, employees and the wider British economy.

“I would accidental hybrid helps retention and recruitment and, if it’s good organised, is astir nett zero connected productivity,” Bloom told peers connected Tuesday.

Earlier successful May the world’s biggest plus absorption company, BlackRock, became the latest company to telephone clip connected an epoch of distant moving by ordering its elder managers backmost to the bureau full-time, successful a alteration from its erstwhile four-day-a-week policy.

The New York-based company, which employs much than 21,000 radical globally, is 1 of a fistful of companies to person followed the Amazon by reinstating pre-pandemic ways of working.

Bloom said helium believed companies issuing afloat return-to-office mandates hoped this would marque unit leave, thereby helping them trim their headcount.

“That 5th time successful particular, it conscionable annoys people. To unit them successful connected Friday doesn’t look to amended productivity,” helium said.