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  How middle-aged, middle-class managers killed the office job
  
  Senior staff are driving the work-from-home trend, and hollowing out the traditional workplace in the process
  Benedict J Smith
  Money writer
  Show biography
  Be ...
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  How middle-aged, middle-class managers killed the office job
  
  Senior staff are driving the work-from-home trend, and hollowing out the traditional workplace in the process
  Benedict J Smith
  Money writer
  Show biography
  Benedict J Smith
  Published 08 September 2026 6:30am BST
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  Offices were once the beating hearts of working life: centres of industry, social hubs and educational arenas where recruits could rub shoulders with veteran colleagues who would impart wisdom garnered from decades of experience.
  
  Yet walk into those same spaces today and many are shadows of their former selves.
  
  Deserted desks, printers in sleep mode and an eerie silence around water coolers have become the hallmarks of an entrenched home-working culture that emerged during the interminable Covid lockdowns of 2020-21.
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  The Government’s most recent snapshot of working preferences shows that more than 40pc of us now spend part or all of the week at home. Before the pandemic, just 5pc worked mainly from home.
  
  However, while young people have often received flak for shirking the office, a closer look at the figures reveals that it is the older managerial class that is driving the current home-working trend – and hollowing out the traditional workplace in the process.
  
  Workers on salaries above £50,000 are more than twice as likely to favour remote working compared with lower-paid staff, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data. So-called hybrid working was found to be most common among “managers, directors and senior officials”.
  
  Meanwhile, less than a fifth of 16 to 29-year-olds are hybrid workers compared with well over a third of 30 to 49-year-olds, according to the data, which was recorded in early 2025.
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  For senior staff in white-collar jobs, the ability to work flexibly offers clear benefits, from saving on childcare costs to eliminating the expense and hassle of commuting.
  
  But those who are starting out in the world of work and are eager to soak up as much as they can are turning up with visions of a fast-paced office environment, only to discover that senior mentors have stayed at home.
  
  For a generation already held back by lockdowns, austerity and shrinking job opportunities, it can leave them feeling increasingly disillusioned.
  
  “New entrants to a job really do need to have people around, mentoring, talking, explaining how to do things,” says Len Shackleton, professor of economics at Buckingham University.
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  “It can take many weeks before people are actually a net contributor to an organisation. Some of that can be done online, but it’s no substitute for informal learning by doing.”
  
  The knock-on effects of this increasingly stunted young workforce are becoming painfully obvious as Britain’s productivity falls behind countries where working from home is less tolerated.
  
  In France, where workers spend an average of just 0.6 days a week at home compared with 1.5 days in the UK, GDP per hour is some $8 (£6) higher than in Britain, according to the latest OECD figures (see bar chart above).
  
  However, with Labour’s flagship workers’ rights reforms making it easier than ever for employees to shun the office, the crisis only risks deepening.
  ‘Hybrid working is the killer deal’
  
  Of all the trends that came out of the pandemic, few transformed day-to-day life like the accelerated transition to flexible working.
  
  Virtually overnight, the traditional five-days-in-the-office norm was turned on its head as employers rapidly adopted remote working setups to enable staff to work from home.
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  Once employers discovered they could operate effectively without staff being in the office every day – significantly reducing overheads – the working-from-home trend endured long after lockdown restrictions were lifted.
  
  Daniel Harris, of recruitment giant Robert Walters, says that over time, it has become a perk that employers can wield on the same level as pension benefits, annual leave, and even higher salaries.
  
  “Companies’ competitive recruitment edge today is around flexible working,” he says. “If you spoke to a candidate in the past about a role, the first questions they would have asked were, ‘What’s the salary? ‘What’s the bonus?’
  
  “Now the first question is, ‘What’s the hybrid working policy?’ Many would consider a reduction in their salary to have the option of working remotely.”
  
  Some 40pc of all UK companies offer staff flexible working arrangements, rising to 57pc for larger organisations, according to the latest CIPD survey. Under the Government’s 60pc rule, most staff across the Civil Service are only required to spend three days a week in the office.
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  Harris says that it is often workers with young families or those who have moved away from the city and its high commuting costs who lean towards roles where flexible working is permitted.
  
  Naturally, these tend to be people over the age of 35, who are likely to have benefited from in-person office experience.
  
  This is reflected in the latest ONS figures showing that 16pc of 16 to 29-year-olds say they have not worked from home in the past week, despite having the option to do so, compared with just 7pc for both 30 to 49-year-olds and 50 to 69-year-olds.
  
  Shackleton says that part of this trend can be attributed to the higher prevalence of flat-sharing and living with parents among younger people, where working from home may be less comfortable.
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  However, as workers get further along in their career, the value they see in being present at the office also drops exponentially.
  
  A post-Covid study by the Centre for Cities think tank found that not only did older workers say that working from home enabled them to better manage childcare obligations, but that they were up to three times more likely than 18 to 24-year-olds to say there were no benefits to going into the office.
  
  Oscar Selby, who led the study, says that because the “marginal gain” of office attendance tends to depreciate as careers progress, the temptation to shun the daily commute becomes greater.
  
  “If you’re slightly older, you’re more likely to be living somewhere such as outer London,” he says. “It means that your commute is likely to be longer, and you might live in a larger house where you’re able to work from home more comfortably.
  
  “Around ages 35 to 44, childcare is also quite an important reason people cite to prefer working from home. So the costs [of going to the office] are more significant for older people than younger people.”
  
  Tax cliff-edges can also kill the incentive to show up as employees reach six-figure salaries.
  
  While Selby says there is clear evidence linking frequency of office attendance and promotions, those who want to avoid the £100,000 trap – whereby earning over that salary threshold leads to a loss of tax-free childcare and a higher effective tax rate (see chart above) – may be deterred from practising any form of presenteeism.
  Rookie lessons
  
  Barren offices may be of little concern to those who have already pushed on in their careers, but they are leaving Britain’s young workers at risk of becoming disillusioned and isolated.
  
  First jobs can be as formative as school or university for young people, offering opportunities to learn skills, build networks and develop resilience.
  
  However, Conor Carleton, who recently conducted research into mental health issues affecting young people for think tank IPPR, says many modern workplaces have become “devoid of some of that contact that would have been commonplace” before Covid.
  
  In an economy where nearly one million under-24s are considered Neets – not in employment, education or training – the discovery upon landing a job that it is more about tedious Zoom calls than working lunches at the pub can be profound.
  
  “For many people, your workplace was a key source of friendships in your 20s, particularly graduates,” Carleton says. “The growth in online working and the lack of time that young people are spending in offices has taken away that point of connection for young people at a really important transition time in their lives.”
  
  IPPR’s study found that one in 20 people aged under 25 reports having no friends at all. When people are struggling with their mental health, Carleton says it can have wider consequences for economic output.
  
  “The proportion of young people who are saying their mental health has affected their ability to get things done, to be productive in their lives, has grown massively,” he says, pointing to IPPR analysis showing the proportion of young people whose mental health meant they accomplished less in the past four weeks had quadrupled since 2012 (see chart below).
  
  The relationship between home-working and worker output was brought into sharp focus by a British Chamber of Commerce survey published last year.
  
  The industry body found that 41pc of UK employers reported home and hybrid working as having a negative effect on productivity compared with 17pc who said it had a positive impact. The same survey revealed that 55pc of businesses cited staff morale or mental health and wellbeing as the top barrier to working remotely.
  
  However, pulling back on flexible working options can prove tricky for businesses.
  The tide could be turning
  
  In a labour market where jobs are scarce, companies can be bolder about issuing back-to-office demands, as many of the leading tech and finance firms have demonstrated.
  
  Last year Deutsche Bank, Panmure Liberum and UBS were among the City firms clamping down on remote working practices, ranging from bans on consecutive Mondays and Fridays at home, to full mandates to return five days a week.
  
  Others have made more concerted efforts to entice staff back by transforming offices into places they actually want to be, offering subsidised lunches, air-conditioning and expanded “quiet zones”.
  
  Even so, Harris says that for those who want to attract the top talent in more senior positions, flexible working is still a must.
  
  Nearly six in 10 employees in the finance sector said requirements around their office presence were making them more likely to leave their role, according to analysis by City recruiter Morgan McKinley.
  
  “The businesses who are currently doing five days a week never did anything other than five days a week,” Harris says.
  
  “The challenge that employers have is rowing back from it.
  
  “If you go to market recruiting for a new role and if you are five days in the office, that does limit the pool of candidates that you can target.”
  
  The Government isn’t making things any easier. One of the flagship changes in Labour’s employment reforms will make it harder for employers to turn down requests for remote working.
  
  To do so, they will have to provide reasonable, evidence-based grounds for refusal, effectively making flexible working the default.
  
  For some people, the freedom to stay at home and work more flexible hours can improve their sense of wellbeing, especially where it provides a better work-life balance.
  
  Shackleton, however, is concerned that if the evidence around the negative effect of working from home on productivity builds, the reforms will make it even more difficult for companies to wind back flexibility.
  
  “It’s worrying because if there are genuine problems with working from home, then this will undermine our productivity and it will undermine our competitiveness,” he says.
  
  “I don’t think working from home is necessarily bad, but what is bad is the idea that the Government should tell you you’ve got to do it,” he adds.
  
  The Government’s position on flexible working flies in the face of some of Labour’s leading figures, not least Mayor of London Lord Khan.
  
  Last year Lord Khan urged employers to encourage their staff back into the office amid fears that London was being “hollowed out” by staff insisting on working from home.
  
  Analysis of central London Tube data by the Centre for Cities shows that travel during peak times on Mondays is just 71pc of pre-Covid levels, while on Fridays it is as low as 61pc (see chart above).
  
  Yet expecting any full return to life before the pandemic is, on current trends, unrealistic.
  
  While older generations can look back fondly on buzzy offices, serendipitous chats and water-cooler gossip, it may be time to accept that the world has moved on.
  
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