Editorial - Return to the office for all ?

The technological advances that enabled millions of office workers to go online overnight during the Covid pandemic have all been swept aside. It has to be said that the trend has already been underway for some time: every six months a giant announcement is made, and one day of work from home is scrapped. After full-time remote, which was quickly called into question once the worst of the crisis had passed, employees thought they had acquired a 'right to work from home' for two to three days a week. Then two days. But now, after extolling the virtues of being fully remote during the pandemic, which enabled productivity to be maintained in jobs that allowed it, companies have signed the end of that era. With free breakfasts, attractive offices and other benefits available only on site, companies had started with the carrot to get employees to return. Reticent at first, some have returned to the office, with its share of traffic jams, but also the social contact that is so lacking when you don't get out of the house.

Working from home is bad for the economy. That's what some economists are arguing. With business districts deserted, the hotel and catering industry at half-mast and the commercial property sector in the doldrums, returning to the office is a relief for many people. Because leaving home to go to work also means consuming. It means taking your car, putting petrol in it and keeping the garages running, giving work to bus, train and tram drivers, eating out, drinking coffee with colleagues, putting on professional clothes and make-up – in short, a whole dynamic that also helps the economy as a whole.