Working in a post-Covid world
Professor Mark Stuart featured in a BBC Worklife article published on 25 March 2021, discussing how major industries are planning their future working practices in a post-Covid world.
Professor Stuart, Co-Director of the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (Digit) and Pro-Dean for Research and Innovation at the Business School, provided expert commentary in the article titled ‘The bosses who want us back in the office’.
The article highlighted the growing number of corporate giants in the financial industry who are rejecting ‘the new normal’, a term that has come to be associated with firms adapting their working practices and culture to suit a more digital and remote world in the wake of the pandemic.
While the tech industry has generally embraced a more flexible approach, with some companies having made working from home a permanent policy early on in 2020, and others opting for a hybrid model, some investment banks and other corporate companies have announced they plan to revert to traditional office life as soon as public health allows.
Professor Stuart commented on the different approaches to remote-working taken by the industries: “Tech companies were doing it anyway...while for other sectors like finance, there is more effort needed to bring about those changes”. Professor Stuart however also stated the importance of nuance in looking at industry trends and the future of work:
Newspaper headlines are written on key companies and there’s a tendency to generalise...Differences have been overstated. The reality is much more nuanced and rather than sector it will depend more on the nature of work people do, the working patterns they have, their occupational profiles.
