In the middle of Cambodia, there is a 400-acre site comprising a complex series of ancient temples. Angkor Wat is so central to the identity of the country that it features on its flag, and yet the story goes that the entire complex was almost lost to history until French colonialists stumbled upon it in the 19th century.
Leaving aside the unnecessary Eurocentric bias in that narrative for a second, imagine a distant future in which the City of London suffers a similar fate. The businesses that once occupied these buildings all move out and the towers are left empty for centuries, until one day a group of explorers happen upon this square mile of once gleaming buildings.
What would they make of it? Visitors to Angkor Wat immediately recognise it a site of both political and religious significance with its myriad of Hindu temples which had been converted into Buddhist ones centuries later, so what would this hypothetical group of explorers assume the inhabitants of the City of London once worshipped?
Money would be one answer, but perhaps a too simplistic one. Businesses make money, but a business is not a building in the City of London. Rather, those buildings are testaments to the worship of one particular thing: office work.
But if office work is a religion, the post-Covid readjustment to the working world has shown that not everyone adheres to it. The idea of working from an office has become a preference rather than a norm and, much like many ideological schisms in religious thinking, has created three distinct camps: those who firmly believe in office work, those who firmly believe in working from home (or indeed anywhere) and those who believe in hybrid working.
Similar to arguments about religion, bubbling underneath this discussion is a debate about freedoms. But it all becomes a thornier issue – particularly in tight labour markets – when chief executives who believe in working from the office come up against employees who think otherwise.
If I had to define my own religious affiliation, it would be as a firm agnostic. I think office work has its benefits, but I also think there are myriad benefits to working from home. So, while a Grade-A office space in London might be enough to tempt people like me back to my desk (ie, people who don’t particularly have a strong religious affiliation either way) the followers of the Church of Work From Home will be much harder to convert. In fact, it is perhaps more likely that they won’t be converted at all. There are enough of them that they have bargaining power as well as the ability to prove that they can do their job just as well from their sofa.
That leaves those businesses with upcoming lease renewals with a decision to make. The real estate office market did not collapse during Covid, because companies who signed five, 10 or 25-year leases were hardly going to incur the cost of breaking them just because of a temporary work from home order. However, now that the post-Covid working environment is becoming clearer those with imminent lease renewals or break clauses will be wondering what their belief system is – and how much faith they have in it.
