Editorial: ​Two days in office should be a civil service minimum

​The covid pandemic has revolutionised much of daily life around the world, above all in the workplace.

​It has led to increases in sick leave caused by a raft of non-coronavirus illnesses, many of them related to mental health. Above all, it has led to a surge in the number of people working from home.

But in fact while this is a global phenomenon, it is far from a uniform one. In poor nations, barely anyone has the luxury of working from their home. In rich countries like our own, very few people in what would typically be called working class or blue collar jobs are able to work from home. How many bricklayers or plumbers or gardeners or hospital porters or factory workers are able to do their duties from their own house? It is something that better paid white collar employees can do.

A degree of homeworking is sensible: the pandemic got people to utilise technology that had been available for a decade beforehand, such as video conference technology.

But now a range of companies are concluding that there is too much home working. In big cities such as London, people are being ordered back to offices. And even if there is a compromise of two days or three days a week in the office, it is much better than none.

Human interaction is essential in most jobs and improves people’s mental health, so might in fact cut down on the high incidence of psychological barriers to work. It also helps new staff to learn their work around their more experienced colleagues. In some cases homeworking has become a selfish thing: suiting senior white collar staff who live in pleasant homes and who learned their line of work long ago.

Above all, homeworking has become much too entrenched in the public sector. The return of a two-day a week in the office for Northern Ireland civil servants is welcome – and should be seen as a absolute minimum return.