Working From Home (Home-based Working Committee Report)

Lord Fink Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fink (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on securing this debate and on her exemplary chairmanship of the committee. I also thank our excellent clerk and staff team who supported the members of the committee, on which I served, and those who gave evidence to the inquiry. It was a pleasure to be part of the committee and, above all, I learned a great deal from the witnesses who gave evidence to us. Those insights helped to produce what I believe is a balanced and thoughtful report, and I am thankful for the opportunity to discuss the issues more widely today. I refer to my registered interests and note that many of the companies in which I have an interest operate in a variety of styles, from fully office-based to hybrid and home working, so I have no real dog in this fight.

To avoid duplication and to save time, I will focus on just four issues. The first is information. I love getting proper stats for things, especially important areas of policy. I continues to amaze and shock me how much money we sometimes spend on areas where we just do not have the evidence to make the decisions that we make, and when the evidence could be available at relatively modest cost. I welcome the Government’s commitment to improving the evidence base. Can the Minister say in summing up, or in writing, how they intend to do so? Will they consider enhancing ONS surveys or sponsoring additional ones? If hybrid working is here to stay, surely we need 21st-century statistics to understand it. At present, our data tells us far too little about how people are working, how they are being managed and what impact this is having on productivity and opportunity, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, mentioned.

The second is lack of training. One of the strongest messages we heard during the inquiry was how many organisations moved to home and hybrid working at extraordinary speed during the pandemic. They did so out of necessity, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, pointed out, and with impressive success given the scale of the challenge. But, understandably, few had the opportunity to retrain managers or redesign systems for supervising, developing and supporting staff working in different ways. In too many cases, more effort went into procuring video conference facilities than training staff, which was ironic. As a consequence, some of the difficulties that have since been attributed to home working may in fact reflect shortcomings in management practices rather than shortcomings in home working itself. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development told the committee that organisations investing in line management training reported much better productivity outcomes, while many business leaders emphasised the importance of effective mentoring and collaboration, particularly for younger workers.

Good management has always mattered, but it matters even more when teams are dispersed. I discovered this myself when in business. If we are serious about improving productivity and increasing labour market participation—for all the inclusivity reasons mentioned of trying to widen out the workforce as much as possible—for home working and hybrid systems to really work, investment in management capability should be seen not as a luxury, but an economic necessity. I therefore hope the Government will consider whether more can be done to encourage and support organisations in developing the skills to make hybrid working a real success. I am not calling for a large new spending programme; rather, I wonder whether existing schemes, such as Help to Grow: Management, could place greater emphasis on leading hybrid teams, looking at best practice that could be shared and bringing together business organisations to develop practical guidance. Such measures need not be expensive, but they could yield significant benefits for productivity, staff retention and economic growth. Will the Minister please consider this? It would take very little cost to do, just organisation.

Thirdly, I have observed that home working was popular with almost all staff, and even many people who worked hybrid wished to go fully remote, but this is an example of being careful what you wish for. Many businesspeople I know would say that any job that can be done totally remotely is more susceptible to being made redundant, either through outsourcing to a cheaper country or using AI. Expecting to be employed in an expensive part of Britian while working totally remotely is probably an unrealistic expectation for the long term.

Fourthly and finally, something that needs to be considered is the impact on young people. For school and university leavers looking for their first employment role, it is in many cases becoming much more difficult for them to integrate into a team where remote working is the norm in terms of training, team working and work ethic. Indeed, as another noble Lord pointed out, the fact that people are hiring fewer young employees as a response to them having to work unsupervised indicates that there is a problem here. Young people learn an amazing amount by mimicry—you have only to go skiing and watch a young ski class all waggling and following the instructor to see that. Without help, they cannot learn. Will the Minister provide reassurance that the Government will consider how to assist young people who are being disadvantaged by the reduction in office-based working?