PwC threatens to sack staff who fail to come into the office

PwC will sack staff who refuse to work from the office, the company’s HR chief has suggested.

Philippa O’Connor, PwC’s chief people officer, told the House of Lords’ home-based working committee that the accountancy giant was prepared to take “disciplinary action” against employees who failed to comply with new rules requiring them to work from the office for at least three days a week.

Lord Fuller, a Conservative peer, asked whether PwC had taken actions against those who refuse to comply, including by stripping staff bonuses, restricting promotions or sacking them.

Ms O’Connor said PwC had not punished any staff yet because of a lack of evidence, having only started monitoring office attendance in January.

However, she added: “Until we’ve had monitoring, the ability to have [the] right evidence to do any of the things that you allude to, I think we felt has been insufficient … Over time we will be looking at that as we roll through our monitoring process.

“We feel that that’s actually important for the very minority of the population that are not in compliance to deliver on [PwC’s] fairness agenda … There is a very careful balance we have to strike”

The warning comes amid increasing concern among managers that widespread home working is stifling productivity. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan chief executive, has said remote work “doesn’t work”.

Major firms including Google, Barclays and WPP have all introduced strict return-to-office policies in recent months.

Ms O’Connor said PwC’s own data suggested staff who worked from the office were more productive and more engaged in their work.

PwC, which employs 23,000 UK staff and has 19 offices across Britain, introduced a stricter hybrid working policy in January, through which staff must work from the office for a minimum of three days each week.

The business previously had a flexible working policy that staff could work from the office for only “two to three days” a week.

Ms O’Connor said: “This is, as with any other employment policy, something that we would look to follow through with disciplinary action if that were required.”

The “big four” accountant told staff in January it would start monitoring office attendance and begin sharing the data it collects with them on a monthly basis.

Ms O’Connor said the data collected so far suggested staff who worked from the office were more productive than employees who worked from home.

She said: “There is a really clear correlation between time in the office and the utilisation of our people and that just indicates to us … that we have got this connection between coming into the office [and] being more productive.”