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Rishi Sunak urges Brits to return to the office as he warns working from home will ‘harm careers’
According to the Chancellor, working from home could be doing a lot more harm than good…
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has encouraged all those still working from home to return back to the office as he warned home working could potentially ‘harm careers.’
Sunak recently reflected on the on the ‘helpful’ relationships he had made during the early years of his career while working in offices.
Ahead of the easing of Covid restrictions last month, Sunak said it was ‘really important’ for young people to be in a workplace and said he was looking forward to ‘slowly getting back to that.’
Speaking to LinkedIn News about the matter, he said: “I have spoken previously about young people in particular benefiting from being in offices.
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“It was really beneficial to me when I was starting out in my career.”
He added that, while on a visit to Scotland last week, he had met a number of young people starting careers in financial services, an industry he has worked in.
He explained: “I was telling them the mentors that I found when I first started my job I still talk to and they have been helpful to me all through my career even after we have gone in different ways.
“I doubt I would have had those strong relationships if I was doing my summer internship or my first bit of my career over Teams and Zoom.
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“And that’s why I think for young people in particular being able to physically be in an office is valuable.”
However, he did acknowledge that a return to work doesn’t have to be immediate and can instead be a gradual process.
“In terms of a return to work, which we have said we would expect that and recommend that to be gradual from when the restrictions eased, in keeping with everything else that we are doing, it’s been gradual, it’s cautious, it’s careful, so there will be a gradual return back to the offices and I think that is what broadly will happen.”
In 2020, approximately 5.6 million people worked mainly from home in the United Kingdom, an increase of around 1.69 million people when compared with 1998.