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<\/p>\nBritish Airways and the newspaper group behind the Daily Mirror have become the latest big companies to signal a major switch to working from home.<\/p>\n
BA said it was considering selling its headquarters near Heathrow because the shift means it may not need so much office space.<\/p>\n
Reach, the company behind the national Mirror and Express newspapers as well as more than 100 regional titles, said three-quarters of staff would now be entirely or mainly home-based.<\/p>\n
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Highly-regarded titles in places such as Leicester will no longer have their own offices.<\/p>\n
BA and Reach are the latest major employers who have decided to make permanent, at least in part, some of the changes that had been forced on them by the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The changes are being presented as a chance for workers to continue to enjoy the benefits of working from home but they will also see businesses save money on office space.<\/p>\n
For BA, which confirmed a story about the possible sale of its west London headquarters that was first reported by the Financial Times, it could be a way of boosting finances hammered by the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
Its Waterside complex near Heathrow – also the HQ of parent company International Airlines Group – was completed in 1998 at a cost of £200m.<\/p>\n
The future of the site was already hanging in the balance as it would need to be demolished if the planned expansion of the airport goes ahead.<\/p>\n
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BA said in a statement that many employees enjoyed working from home and that in future it would be likely to have a flexible mix of home and office working.<\/p>\n
The airline said: “We’ve restructured our business to emerge from the crisis and are considering whether we still have the need for such a large headquarters building.”<\/p>\n
BA has already been slashing costs in the face of the crisis brought about by the collapse in travel over the past year – axing more than 10,000<\/strong> employees.<\/p>\n That has left it with about 30,000 staff – most of whom do not work in the office but are pilots, cabin crew, engineers or airport staff.<\/p>\n Meanwhile Reach said that with most of its employees working from home for more than year it “has decided to make it a permanent feature for many colleagues”.<\/p>\n It will mean a switch to 15 large office hubs in Belfast, Bristol, Birmingham, Dublin, Cardiff, Glasgow, Newcastle, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Oldham, Nottingham, Plymouth and one in the South East.<\/p>\n It means newspaper offices in a number of mid-sized towns will be closing with reporters having to travel to the nearest hub if they want to use an office desk.<\/p>\n A Reach spokesperson confirmed that offices in Coventry, Derby, Middlesbrough, Cheltenham and Leicester would be among those to shut.<\/p>\n The company said a survey of employees showed that most found working from home suits their needs.<\/p>\n “Moving forward colleagues will either be home-based or working mainly from home with regular office attendance, and around a quarter permanently office-based, working from one of 15 hubs around the country,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n Reach added that it would in future be “investing more in our strategy and our journalism and less in buildings”.<\/p>\n Other companies planning to reduce office space include Lloyds Banking Group, which is aiming for a 20% reduction within three years, and HSBC, which is targeting a 40% cut.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, outsourcing giant Capita’s chief executive Jon Lewis told the PA News agency that his company was moving towards a hybrid work model, telling 35,000 of its 55,000 employees they can now work from home most of the time if they wish.<\/p>\n Mr Lewis said call centres of the sort that it operates were “to some extent a historic capability today” and that there were “going to be a lot less of them”.<\/p>\n “There’s no reason why you need to put 2,000 people in a warehouse in the UK,” he said. “Those people can work from home.”<\/p>\n