Can London take the stress of another six months of WFH?

There’s a Rule of Six that the Government does not appear to have considered with this week’s new flurry of mini-lockdowns . It doesn’t refer to six people, but six months. That’s the amount of time psychologists say people can survive in stressful conditions without it doing them long-term psychological damage. We are six months into this crisis, and now the Government has warned us that we have another six months to go. That timescale — so different to the cheery “it’ll all be over by Christmas” promises we’ve had before — was even more deflating than the new restrictions they announced. It has left many employers and their staff frantically reassessing the viability of their businesses, particularly in central London, where working from home has already had a devastating impact on jobs in tourism, hospitality and retail.

It’s left us particularly winded because only last month, when we were being urged to return to work and eat out to help out, we had a delicious chink of light at the end of the crisis tunnel. People returned to offices, even if only for a few days a week. With a few exceptions, they relished chatting and working collaboratively again. New joiners who had never met their colleagues in the flesh were able to receive help and mentoring.

The impact on the central London economy has been palpable. The Centre for Economics and Business Research, using Google data on Londoners’ movements, calculated that the areas around the big employment centres in the city lost £689 million of spending by office workers in locked-down May. In September, that deficit fell to £502 million. Now, as the Covid measures tighten up, the CEBR reckons the final three months of the year will see spending in the city collapse £1.7 billion. More if lockdown gets tougher. Will that spending simply be shifted to London’s “villages” — the suburbs where work-from-homers live?

Some will, but if the previous months are anything to go by, much of it will be saved in bank accounts, as people fear rainy days for their wages and job prospects. It’s that six month stress factor again. Building up your savings is a good thing to a certain level, but if people squirrel away too much, and spend too little, businesses selling to the public, and their suppliers, will fall like skittles. A chain reaction of job losses ensues. Will a return to WFH stem the Covid spread? Perhaps, but at what cost in unemployment, poverty and the nation’s mental health? What toll will it take on the employment hopes of our youth, for whom the virus rarely causes serious harm? The Government has tried to balance these factors. The restrictions on pub opening hours could have been stronger. It could have forced all but key workers to stay home from the office.

That self-restraint is to be applauded. But it should have held off more. Rather than urge people to stop going to the office, it should have advised employers to freeze the return to work at current levels. Because, even before Boris Johnson’s announcement, most offices in London were only a quarter full. Likewise Tubes and trains. Many have safety measures in place.

Workers are, in short, more socially distanced than when they’re walking down the street.

Of course, those who don’t feel comfortable coming in should not feel obliged to. But those who want to, who are struggling with the boredom, loneliness or cramped conditions of working alone at home, should be allowed to keep coming in. After all, many people, particularly in London, live in pokey accommodation wholly unsuitable to a nine or 10-hour shift. The Resolution Foundation found older BAME families particularly suffered from this, with homes 30 per cent less spacious than their white counterparts. Across the UK, those aged 16-24 — of all ethnicities — have on average just 26 square metres of living space. Many homes here have lousy broadband, adding to the stress.

PwC, the accountancy giant, has taken the common sense view that staff for whom working from home has become intolerable are welcome back in, and that teams whose work would benefit from meeting face-to-face should do so. This is the humane and sensible approach which other firms with well organised offices should follow.

We were all surprised at how easily we managed with Zoom and Microsoft Teams in March, but it’s nearly October now. We’ve had enough of looking at grainy images of our faces all day. The stress of going back to WFH for another six months will tip too many people over the edge.