Is the UK suffering from Long Lockdown?

I saw this headline in an article this week by Mathew Lynn, it’s a brilliant headline and I suspect he’s right. The thesis is that the UK is locked into new ways of working which could be characterised as ‘sluggish’. Here are the symptoms:

“We are still reluctant to embrace the world again. Offices are half-empty, the public sector barely even pretends to work five days a week anymore, and companies are still using the virus as an excuse for shoddy service and endless delays.

The latest figures from the “Pret Index” run by Bloomberg show the City only operating at 78 per cent of its pre-pandemic level.

Companies are coming up with an ever more bizarre range of treats to try to tempt reluctant staff back to their desks – free ice cream at Goldman Sachs and free breakfast at Slaughter and May – while many more are giving up and accepting that the ‘‘hybrid’’ model is here to stay, their people will never leave their PJs and Zoom, and they are cutting back on office space instead.”

We are helping several of our blue-chip clients respond to the challenge and plan for the future. It’s very interesting, perhaps the biggest strategic challenge of the last 40 years.

Is your company suffering, or liberated by Long Lockdown? If the former, what’s the cure?