Hybrid working here to stay, says top UK executive
Hybrid working and a mixed approach to the office is here to stay, says Dr Nicola Millard is Principal Innovation Partner.
Speaking on the Business LDN podcast, said that there are clear benefits to doing some work from home, six years on from the Covid pandemic.
“If you spend five days a week working from home, you are engaged, but you’re not thriving… if you’re fully returned back to the office, you’re actually both less engaged and less thriving,” she said.
Millard also spoke on the rise of AI and struck a note of caution and optimism about what the rise and rise of AI could mean for the capital’s workforce.
“I think there’s simultaneously great progress and also great frustration with AI… it’s not necessarily replacing people. The power I’m seeing with AI is how do you actually marry the human brain with AI and improve outcomes, rather than necessarily [having a] step change in productivity.”
People in the UK are currently working from home more than almost any other country in the world, a 2025 study shows.
The research, co-authored with economists from Stanford University, Princeton, ITAM, and the Ifo Institute, confirms stark global disparities in remote work patterns.
While British and American workers have maintained high levels of working from home, workers in East Asia average fewer than a day a week. In Japan and South Korea, office culture remains dominant.
The study shows UK workers are logging an average of 1.8 work-from-home days per week, well above the global average of 1.3 days and the highest in Europe. At a global level, only Canadians average more days a week at home than Brits, with 1.9 work-from-days.
The data is based on the Global Survey of Working Arrangements report, which spans 40 countries and more than 16,000 full-time, university-educated workers. The G-SWA, now in its fourth wave, is the world’s largest cross-country dataset on remote work, tracking actual and preferred work-from-home patterns across demographics, sectors, and geographies.
The report shows that hybrid work has become the dominant model in advanced economies such as the UK.
“This isn’t just a post-pandemic hangover – British workers have clearly decided they’re not going back to the old ways,” said Dr Cevat Giray Aksoy, Associate Professor of Economics at King’s College London and Lead Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
“Remote work has moved from being an emergency response to becoming a defining feature of the UK labour market,” he said.
