As the professional services firm, Deloitte, sharply cuts back its London office space in one of the biggest such moves since Covid triggered a shift to hybrid working, new research from the Harvard Business School (HBS) suggests that one or two days in the office is the ideal setup for hybrid work.
The HBS study is based on an experiment in 2020 where 130 administrative workers were randomly assigned to one of three groups over nine weeks. The authors of the study saw such an arrangement as providing workers with the flexibility they want without the isolation of fully remote work.
The paper, co-authored by Harvard associate professor Prithwiraj Choudhury said: “Intermediate [i.e. a day or two per week] hybrid work is plausibly the sweet spot, where workers enjoy flexibility and yet are not as isolated compared to peers who are predominantly working from home... Intermediate hybrid might offer the best of both worlds”. It also said that “Our results consistently suggest that intermediate levels of WFH may result in both enhanced novelty of work products and greater work-related communication.”
Bloomberg observes that the study is a rarity because it examines actual hybrid worker outcomes rather than just their preferences. Deloitte will leave a building at its New Street Square complex next month, taking to almost 250,000 sq. ft the amount of office space it has given up in the British capital in the past year. According to the Financial Times, a recent internal Deloitte survey found that most staff wanted to come into the office no more than two days a week. Last year the firm told employees to decide for themselves how often they worked from home.
“We are constantly reviewing our office space requirements to reflect changes to our ways of working and our sustainability objectives,” said Stephen Griggs, Deloitte’s UK managing partner, adding that the firm would continue to make investments in its offices across the UK. Deloitte has extended the leases on the two largest buildings in its New Street Square campus until 2036.
As we reported in last week’s newsletter, the move to hybrid work is creating headaches for big cities, such as New York, which are highly dependent on daily commuting to fill office space and support a myriad of small businesses, such as coffee shops, dry-cleaners and hairdressers. However, the move to hybrid work would now appear to be irreversible, as the Deloitte move makes clear, as does the BNP Paribas agreement reported on elsewhere in this newsletter.
Meanwhile, It would seem that UK government ministers believe that daily commuting and having everyone in the office is the only way that things can work. In this, they are clearly out of step with many major corporations that have decided otherwise. No wonder the minister concerned, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is widely known as the Minister for the 18th Century. He probably also expects civil servants to use quill pens rather than new-fangled computers.
