Bosses who force staff back into office are ‘dinosaurs of our age’
Employers who force staff to return to the office five days a week have been branded the “dinosaurs of our age” by the workplace organisation expert who coined the term “presenteeism”.
Sir Cary Cooper, a professor of organisational psychology and health, said employers imposing strict requirements on staff risked driving away talented workers, damaging employees’ wellbeing, and undermining their financial performance.
He spoke after Amazon said this week that all of its corporate staff would be expected to work from the office five days a week, starting from 2 January, as the latest major global employer to demand a return to prepandemic employment practices.
“Unfortunately some organisations and companies are thinking of trying to force people back into the work environment five days a week,” Cooper said. “I think they’re the dinosaurs of our age. The old command and control-type management style.
“If you value and trust people to get on with their job, and give them autonomy – and flexible work is one of those – they’ll work better, you’ll retain them, and they will be less likely to have a stress-related illness.
“If you micromanage, you won’t get productivity gains, and you won’t attract the next generation.”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
Regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on workplace organisation, health and wellbeing, Cooper was the first academic to coin the term presenteeism in the 1980s to describe when employees are at work but not performing to their full potential because of health issues.
He advised the government in the 2000s, producing research leading to an expansion in flexible working legislation under the ConservativeLiberal Democrat coalition in 2014.
Labour is preparing to unveil sweeping changes to workers’ rights legislation within weeks, including measures to make flexible working the default option from day one on the job, alongside a ban on exploitative zero-hours contracts.
Some business leaders have expressed concern over scale of the changes, warning they could damage job creation. However the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, told the Times this week that he wanted to end a “culture of presenteeism” that was holding back the economy. “It [flexible working] does contribute to productivity, it does contribute to [staff ] resilience, their ability to stay working for an employer,” he said.
Cooper, of the University of Manchester’s Alliance Manchester Business School, said the “overwhelming evidence” was that flexible working created higher job satisfaction levels, better retention of staff, and could help drive up workplace productivity.
“Reynolds is absolutely right,” he said. “Working longer doesn’t lead to productivity but more ill health.”
Remote working boomed at the height of the pandemic, leading some experts to predict a permanent shift in working practices. However many firms introduced return-to-office policies, which have since been tightened. Some, including Amazon, Boots and Goldman Sachs, have demanded employees return to a five-day office-based routine.
Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief executive, wrote in a note sent to employees that the online giant believed the “advantages of being together in the office are significant”.
However, the company applies different arrangements for warehouse operatives, including in the UK where flexible part-time contracts and fourday working week arrangements are available.
Last month Amazon UK published the results of a survey it commissioned showing that half of all UK workers want more flexibility at work, with a majority of respondents saying a better work/life balance was the main reason.