John Lewis staff told to be in the office more in bid to keep up with its rivals
John Lewis’ corporate staff have been told they need to be in the office more to keep up with rivals.
A letter to head office staff said they were expected to work with suppliers and customers “face-to-face”, i.e. in the office or outside.
The company said the changes would help increase its revenue and create ‘better results’.
He added that most competitors ‘have noticed improved business performance as well as improvements in collaboration and culture as a result of the hybrid model’.
The company stated that this “hybrid model” will be a model that “allows you to spend more time personally while enjoying the benefits of working at home.”
It comes after John Lewis, which also owns Waitrose, posted a loss of £21 million last year, compared to a pre-tax profit of £97 million the year before.
Head office teams, including those working in HR and finance, need to ‘spend more of their working week collaborating face-to-face with their teams and others they work with’.
John Lewis said it was exploring options to ‘create more space’ in its offices to allow more people to come regularly.
A spokesman for John Lewis said: ‘While some in our industry are returning to the office full-time, our policy remains unchanged and we are committed to the flexibility that a hybrid approach brings.’
John Lewis’ corporate staff have been told they need to be in the office more to keep up with rivals
It comes after employees at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) gained the right to work from home permanently this month.
Quango staff threatened to go on strike after bosses told them they had to come into the office two days a week.
The dispute, which began two years ago, ended earlier this month when the ONS gave up trying to bring in staff.
Months of strikes followed after the organization said staff would be required to return to the office 20 percent to 40 percent of the week.
This decline does not bode well for other public sector services trying to get staff back to the office.
Unions hailed the announcement as a ‘breakthrough’ and said it was the first time the office attendance requirement had been breached.
The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) said the deal was ‘more sensible’ than attempts to force staff to work from the office for two days.
In December last year, NHS chief Sir Jim Mackey (nicknamed ‘Sleepy Jim’ because he was seen napping in a first-class train carriage in the middle of a working day) ordered staff to ‘WFH’ less.
NHS England’s £300,000 CEO has told staff they should work from the office ‘at least 60 per cent of the time’, according to the Health Service Journal.
