Boris Johnson has insisted that employees are “more productive, more energetic, more full of ideas” when in the workplace with colleagues. He’s also 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.”

Cheese aside, the pandemic has proven that not only can people work from home, but they have been actively practicing flexible working for two years. So why can’t some employers get on board with flexible working? we’ve listed a few possible reasons below:

1. The employer thinks that if they can’t see you then you’re not being productive
   Recent research found the majority of organisations (72%) saw an increase in productivity as a result of remote and hybrid working – with productivity increasing on average by 27%. Chris Donnelly from digital marketing firm Verb said, “Moving forward, individuals will self-select the companies they want to work at and those putting a hard line about mandatory work from the office will struggle to attract the best talent and be competitive. People have experienced now that you can do your work, from home, without commuting, saving money and achieve the same outcome. At this point in time, we have to move past the subjectivity and bias of the public debate and look at the evidence. The evidence has been positive for work from home; with most studies now stating that there is a small, 3-5% increase in productivity when working from home.”
2. Employer think that you might be ‘skiving off’
   Jo Caine, the managing director for recruitment agency, Cathedral Appointments, said, “If employers are questioning the trust they have for their teams, then they must look inwards and understand whether this is a potential insecurity they have in their own leadership or problematic communication streams which have not been improved and adapted for this post-pandemic world. Nine times out of ten, this lack of trust is not warranted, and may be extremely detrimental to the retention of top-quality talent.”
3. Politicians stuck in the past
   Dr John Blakey, founder of The Trusted Executive Foundation said, “The likes of Alan Sugar and Boris Johnson are judging others by their own standards. Some leaders are simply failing to build trust in the new world of work. Leaders who do trust people to work from home generally have built a “results only” work environment. As long as the employee is delivering results consistently and they contribute to the organisation’s goals, it doesn’t matter if they don’t start work until 1pm, or they work through the night, as long as they deliver on their results. But old-style bosses are still relying on trust in power, rather than the power of trust. People don’t want to be told what to do anymore, they want to be empowered to be trusted in the job they do and to deliver the results required of them.”