Office staff at Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group will no longer work from home on Fridays after a memo said some “do not treat Friday as a working day”.
The memo from the retail group’s chief operating officer, David Al-Mudallal, seen by The Sun, says there are “too many examples” of people being unavailable when they need to be.
In 2020, the so-called “Frasers Fridays” were introduced as a flexible working time arrangement.
A spokeswoman said the company believes people work better in an office.
The spokeswoman told the BBC “collaboration” is “key to how we deliver value”.
“We believe that we are all at our best when we work together in an office environment,” she added.
Mr Al-Mudallal is said to have told staff that some of their social media profiles “show that they do not treat Friday as a working day”.
He added that Friday has become an “unproductive day of the week.”
The Frasers Group, which includes brands like House of Fraser, Debenhams and Evans Cycles, is owned by Sports Direct founder and retail billionaire Mike Ashley.
Mr Ashley handed the day-to-day running of his retail empire to his future son-in-law Michael Murray in May.
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Frasers Group bosses are understood to have been measuring staff productivity since the flexible work schedule began on Fridays and deciding to bring staff back into the office.
Flexible and hybrid work patterns – with some people working some days at home and others in the office – have become more common since the coronavirus pandemic restrictions were lifted.
However, companies differ in their views on new labor practices. In April of this year, Airbnb decided to let its employees work from anywhere for as long as they like, but last year the Goldman Sachs chief dismissed remote work as the “new normal,” instead calling it a “deviation.”
Working from home part of the week has become the norm for some employees, a survey of managers has found.
The Chartered Institute of Management found in February that more than 80% of companies have adopted hybrid working — the most since the pandemic.
The institute said companies should embrace hybrid work as “best practice”.
In April, Ben Willmott, director of public policy at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said hybrid work allows companies to stretch the recruiting web to try to address skill shortages and it can improve productivity and workforce Improve life balance.
But he added that hybrid work also has potential downsides, including the possibility of a “two-tier workforce” with a split between those who have a lot of flexibility and those who can’t work from home.
The UK government said in September 2021 it wants to give workers the right to request flexible working hours if they start a new job from day one and is currently considering more than 1,600 responses to a consultation that concluded last December became.
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