London workers slower to return to office than New York or Paris, study says

Workers in London have been slower to return to the office than those in other global cities such as Paris and New York, a report has found.

London was near the bottom of the pack, with office attendance similar to levels in Toronto and Sydney, according to research by the Centre for Cities thinktank, which surveyed employees and employers in six big cities.

Workers in central London spend 2.7 days a week in the office on average, up from 2.2 days a week last year, the poll found. That was less than workers in Paris, who come in 3.5 days a week, while those in Singapore attend 3.2 days a week and workers in New York’s central business district spend 3.1 days in the office.

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London’s results were similar to Toronto, where the average office attendance is 2.7 days a week, and Sydney, where the figure was 2.8 days a week.

On Fridays, London’s offices are the emptiest of all the cities. It is also the only city where younger workers come in to the office more often than their senior colleagues, the report found. People in their 20s are in the office three days a week, on average, while those over 35 go in for two-and-a-half days.

“In London, a quarter of workers come into the office just one or two days – that’s the most of any city,” said Rob Johnson, an analyst at the thinktank and the author of the report.

“So you’ve got quite a lot of workers who are quite tenuously linked to their offices. London’s offices on a Friday are the emptiest of all the cities and we see the sharpest drop from the midweek average. And London’s midweek average is relatively low.”

Travel costs are more of a barrier to office working in London than in any other city, the report said. It recommended that Transport for London should resume and extend its off-peak Fridays policy to reduce travel costs.

In March, the capital’s transport authority launched a three-month trial of off-peak fares all day on Fridays on its network, including the underground, the Docklands Light Railway, the overground, the Elizabeth line and some National Rail services across London and the south-east.

Workers’ attitudes suggest very few simply do not like being in the office, and companies with budgets for “perks” or office revamps to entice workers back might find their money better spent on subsidising commutes instead, the report said.

Centre for Cities suggested that business leaders should lead by example. “More senior staff coming into the office could improve decision-making, productivity and the development of younger colleagues,” it said.

The thinktank called on the government and the mayor of London to continue to work with companies in the centre of the capital and business groups to set higher expectations of days in the office, through a campaign similar to the “Let’s Do London” that was launched to revive tourism after pandemic lockdowns eased.

Fewer than one in 10 London workers would look for a new job if attendance mandates rose, the survey found.

“London’s most popular number of mandated days has shifted from two to three days over the past year, and almost all employers in the London city centre have some sort of mandate,” Johnson said. “But in the international context, London has the lowest mandates of all cities looked at.”

Separate research in June commissioned by International Workplace Group found that hybrid working made employees happier, healthier and more productive.

Nick Bloom, a professor at Stanford University, who has looked at hybrid working said: “The pandemic has started a revolution in how we work, and our research shows working from home can make firms more productive and employees happier. But like all revolutions, this is difficult to navigate.”