Lord Alan Sugar has become the latest high-profile business leader to attack remote working, insisting that young people “just want to sit at home” and need to get their “bums back into the office.”
Speaking to the BBC, the 77-year-old entrepreneur and star of The Apprentice said workplace culture had suffered in the years since hybrid and flexible policies were introduced during the pandemic.
“I’m a great advocate of getting them back to work,” Sugar said. “The only way an apprentice is going to learn is from his colleagues. It’s small things, like interaction with your more mature colleagues, that will tell you how to do this, how to do that. That is lacking in this work-from-home, Zoom culture.”
Sugar, whose property group Amsprop owns a large portfolio of central London office buildings, said he recognised that some roles could be exceptions. “Software writers who get up at three o’clock in the morning with some kind of brainstorm,” he noted, might be better off at home, as well as people with disabilities.
His intervention comes as the debate over the future of work continues to divide corporate Britain. Official data from the Office for National Statistics shows that as of October, 28 per cent of the workforce is hybrid – splitting their time between home and the office. Another 44 per cent commute every day, while 13 per cent are fully remote. Many respondents to the ONS survey said hybrid work improved their rest, exercise and wellbeing.
The Labour government is preparing to legislate to make hybrid working a right for employees unless their employer can demonstrate it is unreasonable. The Employment Rights Bill will extend flexible working options across the economy, although many of Britain’s largest firms are already moving in the opposite direction. Amazon, JP Morgan and others have ordered staff back to offices full-time, arguing that face-to-face contact boosts collaboration and productivity.
Landlords have warned that the hybrid trend has made commercial properties harder to lease and less lucrative. Sugar’s comments underline the concerns of those invested in Britain’s office sector.
His intervention follows that of fellow business veteran Lord Stuart Rose, the former chairman of Marks & Spencer and Asda, who earlier this year declared that working from home is not “proper work” and has set the country back “20 years” in productivity and wellbeing.
For Sugar, the problem is most acute for younger workers and apprentices, who he says risk missing out on informal learning opportunities. “They’ve got to get their bums back into the office,” he repeated, warning that Britain’s work culture is at risk of permanent change if remote working becomes the norm.
