Do mediocre workers thrive more when they work from home or when they are in the office? This is not a question I ever thought about much before the pandemic, though if I had, I might have guessed the second-rate preferred to clock on at home.
That is certainly what some top executives have suggested, as the effort to refill Covid-emptied offices has gathered pace this year. Working from home suits the “least engaged”, according to WeWork’s boss, Sandeep Mathrani. It’s no good for people keen to “hustle”, says JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon.
But what if the reverse is true? Max Thowless-Reeves is a former UBS private banker who runs his own wealth management firm in Stafford, north of Birmingham, where he is a visiting teaching fellow at the Aston Business School.