Workers and businesses have adapted to new ways of working during the pandemic with astonishing speed and alacrity. Where previously it was believed that only 15 per cent of workers could do their jobs from home, at one point nearly half of those in employment were doing so. Perhaps inevitably, the clamour for new ways of working – from a four-day week to a right to disconnect – has intensified over the past two years.

It emerged today that the nation’s productivity increased last quarter, despite the ‘work from home’ guidance issued following the rise of Omicron. Four-day working week trials have been launched in the UK in an effort to measure whether output rises when employees can down tools on a Thursday afternoon. And it was revealed last week that job adverts for roles offering a condensed week made up 2.3 per cent of the total in January 2022, up from 1.3 per cent five years ago.

Already, the government has introduced a right to request flexible working from day one. And across the channel, Belgians will have the right to work a four-day week without a loss of salary under a government overhaul of the country’s labour laws prompted by the pandemic. 

To the innocent observer, allowing work to fit around people’s lives, or providing a better work-life balance, is a positive development. The prospect of 2022 becoming the year a bold new working future is established has widespread appeal. But for all the fixation on employee wellbeing and jobs that afford workers a particular quality of life, we are forgetting that any labour market regulation carries a cost to business – and one that is often largely hidden. 

The Belgian government may appear to be creating a workplace panacea, but its over-regulated labour market has led to an employment rate around ten percentage points lower than ours. New data may suggest output surges when we work from home, but this could be down to a range of factors, such as the likelihood that the pandemic disproportionately killed off lower productivity firms.  

And any four-day week trials will inevitably suffer the Hawthorne effect, telling us next-to-nothing while appearing to strengthen the case for those in favour of yet more employment legislation. It risks a two-tier system, with more ambitious, able or willing employees working the full five days – which is unlikely to help, for instance, working mothers. 

Plus it won’t be applicable to huge swathes of the workforce. 99 per cent of UK businesses are small to medium-sized, and only 25 per cent of them employ more than one person. The self-employed work more than five days a week, and if they leave they do so at their own cost. If a surgeon or a policy officer takes the day off, someone else must be employed. How do you coordinate that, and how much would it cost? 

Conservative MPs may insist the right to request hybrid working from day one is perfectly innocuous, but the burden will shift towards employers, who will now be expected to justify any objections. Business owners will worry that any rejection could lead them to the employment tribunal, with the Alice Thompson case – where the estate agent won a £185,000 payout after her employer refused to let her leave work at 5pm – fresh in their minds. As many regulations are ambiguous and costs of getting things wrong can be high, defensive departments will be incentivised to impose even more excessive levels of compliance to reduce risks.

All of which begs the question: who would be an employer in Britain today? As if the National Insurance Contributions hike or the six percentage points increase in corporation tax weren’t burdensome enough, this raft of workers’ rights will make it even more costly and precarious to take on new staff. And it’s possible – if not likely – that these benefits will be rolled out across the public sector, where average weekly earnings are 7 per cent higher, first, making it even harder for private sector businesses to compete. 

None of this is to suggest that firms and employees should not adopt new, mutually agreeable, modes of working. Undoubtedly, some employees work more productively on a four-day week – or from their home office. Many employers will prioritise saving on overheads – heating, office space – or attracting new staff with flexible perks over the advantages that presenteeism may bring. The Covid era of remote working will have opened up more opportunities for disabled workers, many of whom may have been previously excluded from the workforce due to a lack of flexibility. 

Ultimately, it is sensible for people to be able to freely negotiate working patterns. But there is little justification for mandating it.