Some publishing staff set to work from home until 2021

Publishers are divided on when staff should return to office buildings, with some back at their desks already but others—including Pearson and Taylor & Francis—expecting to keep some staff at home until next year.

Prime minister Boris Johnson said last week that from 1st August the government would no longer be telling people to work from home where they can, but would leave it to the discretion of employers.

For now, all of Pearson’s office locations remain closed, including those outside London, as the publisher continues to enable staff to work from home. It confirmed it is planning on a return to its London HQ at 80 Strand in 2021, with arrangements being made to enable employees wanting to come into the office to work from its 190 High Holborn office from "later this year". Meanwhile a Taylor & Francis spokesperson said the company "have committed to homeworking as our default mode of working through to year-end, wherever reasonably possible."

Springer Nature said it had used a colour code guidance system to advise colleagues in its approximately 200 locations worldwide on business travel and working from home arrangements. A spokesperson said: "This is based on government/ regulatory advice, local infection rates and other factors such as commuting patterns. With four levels of office access (red, orange, yellow and green) - red being closed completely and green, open with very limited restrictions - only our office in New Zealand is green. Currently all our UK locations are on ‘orange’ status which means that colleagues are strongly recommended to work from home. From our regular polls, we know that the majority of our colleagues are able to work from home effectively and would prefer to continue doing so until they feel able to commute safely."

In contrast, at illustrated publisher Quarto, c.e.o. Polly Powell has been in the office three days a week for the past month.

“All Quarto’s three offices are now open,” she said. “We felt it important for all staff to be able to decide as to whether they wanted to work at home or at the office. Not everyone is lucky enough to have home office space. I felt it was important that staff had a sense of a physical space - Zoom is great but it has its limitations.

“Luckily our offices are bright and airy, and we have been able to instigate social distancing measures relatively easily and quickly. We have installed more bike racks and showers in order to facilitate easier ways to get to work without having to rely on public transport.

“Most importantly, we are going to be much more flexible in terms of hours and indeed working from home more often. I still feel that people will need to regularly attend the office, once they are comfortable with their travel arrangements, not least in order to engage with their colleagues. I have been in the office three days a week for the last month, making preparations and using the opportunity to give the place a bit of a spruce up." But she added: "I do not foresee us going back to the level of office occupancy before Covid, as new working patterns emerge and develop.”

It is understood that staff not engaged in "business critical" tasks at the biggest publishers, such as Hachette UK, Penguin Random House UK and S&S UK, aren’t expected back into the office until at least September.

Penguin Random House UK has already opened its office at Vauxhall Bridge Road for a limited number of staff for whom it was essential to be on site or for whom working remotely has been extremely challenging. It has also done the same for offices on its sites at Frating, Grantham, Manningtree and Rushden, with a number of safety measures and precautions having been implemented to protect them while they are working and ensure they can be socially distanced in the office.

All other PRH UK staff will continue to work remotely until at least September, when, depending on government guidance, it is aiming to take “a phased approach”, with hopes to open up, gradually, more of its sites to more colleagues.

Thinking ahead, in May it gave all staffers the opportunity to contribute to a discussion on the future of work through an online tool called Crowdoscope - asking them to give their thoughts and feedback on what positive elements they might be able to take from this crisis on how they want to work in the future.

Hachette UK confirmed its plans haven’t changed and it is still hoping to reopen its offices on 7th September, as reported last month, with all staff “moving to a blended way of working between the office and home. How much time they spend in the office will depend on their personal circumstances,” a spokesperson said, with examples including if they or their dependants are vulnerable, “and also the latest government guidance on social distancing, which will help to determine how many people we can have in the building at one time.”

S&S UK also confirmed September is still the plan. A spokesperson noted however this would be for “a limited number of staff” and “it is subject to review at any point between now and then”.

Bonnier Books UK has yet to confirm when the bulk of its staff will be back but said its offices were open for "business critical" tasks that can't be done from home. Jonathan Perdoni, chief operating officer and chief finance officer for Bonnier Books UK, said: "Last week our Igloo office in Northampton reopened to a small proportion of staff, for business critical processes which cannot be performed effectively from home. A similar return for a small number of staff will apply to our London & Chichester offices from early August. Any staff attending our offices do so on a voluntary basis and taking into account personal circumstances. The safety of our staff continues to be our top priority."

Independent publishers The Bookseller spoke to are responding according to the individual circumstances of their staff and situations of their offices. While Faber and Sweet Cherry both confirmed they had no immediate plans for staff to return to the office, Juliet Mabey, publisher at Oneworld, described how the prime minister's latest advice had prompted it to contemplate having staff back at the start of August on a voluntary basis.

“We are fortunate in having a Georgian office with multiple small rooms rather than an open-plan layout, so it is probably easier for us to invite staff back in safely than for many other publishers,” said Mabey. “We have already prepared our office for reopening - we have carried out the government’s risk assessment, stocked up on hand gel, disposable masks and organised a new desk layout - and we are confident that our office will be a safe place to work. However, we have hesitated to open it formally due to a concern that travelling to work poses risks for staff having to use public transport and in turn for their colleagues who can perhaps cycle or walk to work.

“Up till now the government has asked that those staff who can work from home should, but this advice is in the process of changing. Consequently, we are contemplating opening the office at the start of August, on a voluntary basis, a few days a week, so setting up a hybrid system of working in house and remotely, as staff prefer.”

Andrew Franklin, founder of Profile Books, said he was unimpressed by the government’s mixed messaging around the issue. However, he said decisions had to be made, and his had been influenced by the demands of childcare on working parents, meaning September would be the earliest it could ask employees back.

“Nothing could be more confusing than the so-called guidance from this pitiful government,” said Franklin. “So we are as much at sea as every other organisation in the country about what to do.

“However, we have made some decisions - as have all our publishing friends in the Independent Alliance - because we must. We know that we can’t ask people to come back to the office until schools fully reopen and people have childcare in place; others for personal or health reasons are likely to continue to work from home for a long time. For the moment we are operating the office as a drop in centre with very strict rules about colleagues registering their intention to come in advance so we can control numbers. We continue to have all meetings on Zoom. Personally I have loved popping back into the office and seeing people again and I can’t wait to have more of us here - though that probably won’t be until September at the very earliest and maybe later. I hadn’t fully realised how much I had missed everyone.”

Meanwhile, Cambridge University Press said all of its staff are currently working from home, likewise, and they will be given the option to keep working from home, even as a phased return to the office is due to start later in the summer. "The need to maintain social distancing and to keep people safe means that the number of colleagues allowed in the office at any one time will be limited for the foreseeable future,” a spokesperson said. Oxford University Press said it did not have any immediate plans to return to its Oxford office either, where around a third of its global workforce is based. It currently has "soft closure measures" in place, meaning employees should not go into the office unless they have "business critical" work to do and their visit is pre-approved.