"Not Proper Work." Really?
At 6:30 am, I was at my laptop, coffee in hand, dealing with emails, drafting a report, whilst clearing some household admin. But apparently, according to Lord Rose on today’s BBC News, that’s “not proper work.” Because I am doing it home alone.
Headlines like this dismiss the contributions of women who have embraced remote working—not just to balance professional and personal responsibilities, but to excel at both. Remote work has allowed many women to remain in the workforce, contribute at a high level, and break free from outdated structures that often penalise caregivers.
What exactly does he mean by “productivity”? Is it about the quantity of tasks completed? The speed? Or maybe the quality of thought and creativity we bring to our roles? Or maybe Lord Rose needs an audience to witness his own epic workrate.
Productivity is not a one-size-fits-all measure—and it certainly can’t be boiled down to how many hours someone spends at a desk in a corporate office. Productivity thrives under a caring and skilled manager who provides on-the-job coaching and understands when in-person support is truly needed
The idea that working from home equates to slacking off is not only outdated but dismissive of the nuanced realities faced by so many professionals—especially women. It’s time to value results, not reinforce barriers that hold women back from thriving in their careers.
Lord Rose, your perspective is a reminder of why progress matters. Women are working smarter, harder, and with more impact than ever—whether that’s in the boardroom or from the kitchen table.
Here’s what he said (as per the BBC):
Working from home is ‘not proper work’, former Asda boss says
Working from home is creating a generation who are “not doing proper work,” says Lord Rose, the former boss of Marks and Spencer and Asda. Lord Rose told BBC Panorama that home working was part of the UK economy’s “general decline” and employees’ productivity was suffering. His comments come as some companies call time on remote working. Amazon, Boots and JP Morgan are just some of the businesses which now require their head office staff to be in every day. Lord Rose said: “We have regressed in this country in terms of working practices, productivity and in terms of the country’s wellbeing, I think, by 20 years in the last four.” In a December 2024 survey by the Office for National Statistics, 26% of people said they had been hybrid-working in the prior seven days, while 13% had been fully remote and 41% had been fully office-based (the remainder were not working at the time). Work-from-home expert Prof Nicholas Bloom says that while fully remote work can be “quite damaging” to some workers’ productivity, spending three days out of five in the office was as productive as fully office-based work overall.
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Productivity is not a one-size-fits-all measure—and it certainly can’t be boiled down to how many hours someone spends at a desk in a corporate office.
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