How Covid changed the way Britain works and plays

The Guardian

19-03-2025

Jessica (not her real name) is facing up to the reality of juggling work and childcare for the first time. After having a baby during the pandemic, the data analyst from the north of England is now expected to spend 40% of her working week in the office, a rule enforced by her employer since January.
'I'm struggling with the requirements for office time and it's meaning I have much less free time and am feeling constantly stressed,' she said. 'The reality is that I'd need to leave my job if I had to be in the office full-time.'
Despite working part-time, combining a long commute with nursery drop-off and pickup is proving tricky, especially as her husband's job is not flexible.
Even though her manager is pleased with her performance, he is unable to change what he considers a 'stupid policy', which Jessica views as 'an arbitrary rule imposed by senior leaders who have very different roles'.
Over the past few years, Jessica and millions of other office-based workers like her have benefited from the post-pandemic rise in home working, and are now grappling with employers' enforcement of office attendance or fresh return-to-office mandates.
When the first lockdown was called in March 2020, millions of office-based workers were hurriedly packed off home with their laptops, from where they would spend much of the next year carrying out their roles from their kitchen tables, spare bedrooms or even garden sheds.
This may not have done wonders for workers' backs (ONS data charts a big rise in the number of people found unfit for work because of neck and back injuries), yet for many the temporary measure has proved permanent.
Many employers saw the proof that staff could work efficiently from home; productivity remained the same, or even increased at some organisations. Meanwhile, workers got a taste of life without the commute, enjoying more time for family or hobbies and a better work-life balance.
While remote working is not possible for all professions – prompting warnings from analysts that Britain is splitting into a two-tier workforce – professionals who are able to carry out their jobs remotely for some of the week have come to regard this as a right rather than a perk.
'Pre-Covid, people were at their wits' end,' said Christine Armstrong, a researcher in the future of work. 'In the last 20 years, office days have expanded, with laptops, BlackBerrys, mobiles, conference calls at 10 o'clock at night with international colleagues.'
Enforced home working 'showed people there was an alternative', she said. 'In almost every group of workers if there is the ability to have some flexibility they are keen to have it. Obviously it suits working parents, and particularly working dads.'
Once the lockdowns were lifted, the vast majority of organisations settled in to a hybrid model – with the working week split between the office and home, or another location.
While the proportion of people working only from home has dropped from its lockdown peak – 37% in February 2021 to a third of that figure in late 2024 – the proportion of people hybrid working has remained relatively stable at 28%.
Hybrid working is now more common for certain groups, including people with higher qualifications, those working as managers or professionals, parents, and people aged over 30.
Research by the commercial property analytics company CoStar found that in the early months of 2020, offices were as full as they had been in more than a decade, with 4.5% of office space vacant. By winter 2024, this number had nearly doubled to 8.6%. The highest rate of vacancies is in London and Scotland, where 10% of office space is empty, according to the report.
The 'working from home debate' seemed settled: the future was hybrid. Then, last summer, came a flurry of return-to-office mandates from a string of large corporates including Asda, BT and KPMG. Amazon went one step further and hauled staff back to their desks five days a week.
This sparked enormous tension in the workforce, said Armstrong, as the bosses calling for office attendance stressed how cooperation and collaboration was fostered by bringing teams together under one roof.
So far, a refusal to return to the office has not faced many legal tests, and few analysts expect employers to fire reliable workers over the issue. In the race for talent, recruiters report that those employers demanding higher office attendance receive fewer candidates for vacancies, or have to pay a premium.
The balance of power between leaders and their staff may, however, shift further under Labour's employment rights bill, which could make flexible working the default option for workers from day one on the job.
For many workers, less frequent office working equals less money spent on commuting, which became vital for some during the cost of living crisis that followed the pandemic.
However, cheaper fares don't appear to hold the key to enticing more workers back to their desks. Transport for London's 2024 trial of charging off-peak only fares all day on Fridays across London Underground and other rail lines was deemed to have made no noticeable difference. TfL wanted to know if cheaper tickets would boost passenger numbers – and the capital's economy – after the Friday morning rush-hour had remained stubbornly quieter than other weekdays since Covid.
Office workers' desire to bookend a 'core' week in the office – Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays – with home working on either side has also had an impact on city centre pubs, bars and restaurants.
Walk past many central hospitality venues on a Thursday evening, and it's clear the traditional Friday night drink with colleagues, once the entry to the weekend, has been swapped for a Thursday post-office get-together before the final commute home of the week.
'Something really dramatic happened to change consumer behaviour during Covid in a way that I have never seen in the last 30 years, and a big part of it was the ability to work from home,' said entrepreneur Sarah Willingham, who previously owned the Bombay Bicycle Club chain of Indian restaurants.
She launched her latest venture, the Nightcap hospitality group – owner of bar chains including The Cocktail Club and Dirty Martini, as well as Brighton's i360 tower – during the pandemic, and has witnessed the ensuing 'revolution' in how customers socialise.
'We can see it in the bars, Thursday night is much bigger than it used to be, but Friday night is still bigger,' she said, adding this was particularly evident at City of London venues.
Another unexpected Covid hangover for hospitality is customers' desire to reserve a table in advance, Willingham said, rather than spontaneously turning up at a venue.
While eating and drinking with friends remains as popular as it was before the pandemic, smaller numbers of people are hitting the dancefloor. The final song has been played at hundreds of nightclubs over the past decade, leaving 831 venues across Great Britain in September 2024, almost 1,000 fewer than in 2013. The pandemic sped up their decline, causing more than a third of Britain's clubs to fall silent, the Night Time Industries Association has said – although recent figures suggest the picture could be improving, with 14 cities seeing an increase in numbers between December 2023 and December 2024.
More than 17,000 of the UK's licensed venues, including pubs, restaurants and hotels, were unable to survive the months of enforced closure, or the subsequent repayment of Covid-era loans, closing their doors for good during the five years after December 2019, according to analysts CGA via NIQ for their hospitality market monitor. The number of new venues being opened each year has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The hospitality sector was 'devastated' by Covid, according to Kate Nicholls, chief executive of the trade body UKHospitality, and has fought hard to meet its customers' changing needs.
Throughout the tumult of the past few years, consumers' desire to socialise with colleagues or friends has not diminished. 'But hospitality has had to adapt to changing working patterns and consumer behaviour to ensure it is delivering for the public, who still list eating and drinking out as one of their priorities,' she said.