WPP has highlighted the glacial pace at which staff are returning to work as the coronavirus lockdown eases, with just 3% of UK employees regularly heading in to its offices.
The world’s biggest employer in the marketing and advertising sector, which has clients spanning Ford to Facebook, has a workforce of about 10,000 in the UK.
WPP revealed on Wednesday that just 300 staff are working in its British offices, as the company takes a cautious approach to health and safety and embraces the homeworking revolution.
The UK is lagging behind WPP’s other most important European market, Germany, where 17% of staff are back in the office. However, in markets where the pandemic is still widespread the prospect of a significant return to work remains distant. In the US, where WPP employs 19,000 staff, office working is at 1%. And all WPP’s 8,000 staff in India are still working remotely.
The sluggish rate of the return to work chimes with a report from the Centre for Cities, which found that overall just 17% of workers in British cities had returned to offices by early August. The data, based on mobile phone signals, showed no increase in the footfall of workers going to city centres between late June and the week starting 3 August.
The new data underscore the challenge facing Boris Johnson, who is desperate to get people back to work to help reignite spending in towns and cities.
“The costs of office closures are becoming clearer by the day,” said Carolyn Fairbairn, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry. “Some of our busiest city centres resemble ghost towns, missing the usual bustle of passing trade. This comes at a high price for local businesses, jobs and communities.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers, which employs 22,000 staff in the UK, said this month it had just a little over a quarter of staff spending time in one of its 20 offices. The “big four” accountancy firm is aiming to get to 50% capacity by the end of September, but returning to work will be voluntary.
The Office for National Statistics has said footfall in mid-August in high streets, retail parks and shopping centres had only reached 70% of levels a year ago.
WPP has issued guidelines to its agencies that limit office capacity to 20%, with the possibility of moving to 30% occupancy in the future if further health and safety requirements can be met.
Returning to work is voluntary at WPP and the majority of those who have gone back to the office are younger staff members who have found remote working challenging because of a lack of space at home.
Mark Read, WPP chief executive, said he expected the numbers of staff heading to work will increase as more offices are opened, but health and safety comes first.
“While I am concerned about small businesses and footfall in central London, where most of our people work, there is a need to give people the confidence that it is safe as numbers returning rise,” he said. “We are going to think much more flexibly. I don’t think 99% of people working from home is sustainable in the long term, but neither do I think a 99% return to the office is.”
