Are workers working from home more or less productive than those catching the 7.02am to London Bridge every day? ‘Probably sitting at home in their bleedin’ jim-jams’, said someone recently of a less-than-helpful call centre employee, the assumption being that, were they surrounded by colleagues and with a manager cracking the whip, he or she would have sorted his energy bill more efficiently. Dream on! Yet many of the many post-pandemic academic studies into the subject now say that bringing back the commute to the office is both good and necessary. I beg to differ, my non-academic view being that those that skive will skive (and so need sorting) wherever they are, and that giving motivated and appropriately skilled staff options and freedom has the be the modern way. The days of office fodder are and should be over and a bit of both has surely to be the sensible answer.
“Arrest of alleged spy raises questions around UK’s China policy”
If you’ve read Ben MacIntyre’s “The Spy and the Traitor”, you’ll know that Russia, then the Soviet Union, was recruiting both MPs and their staff left (of course), right and centre in the Cold War 60’s and 70’s.
