It’s been over four years since the COVID-19 pandemic, but the world isn’t quite back to “normal” yet. Nowhere is that better evidenced than in how employees around the globe are responding to return-to-office (RTO) mandates.
Of the world’s top business hubs, the patterns around office attendance vary widely. But if there’s one city close to the old normal, it’s Paris.
The French capital trumps all its peers for in-office presence, with 3.5 days on average across 1,000 employees surveyed by the think tank Centre for Cities. That’s much higher than London’s 2.7 days a week or New York’s 3.1 days.
But that’s not all: Parisians don’t face the same Monday blues as others, leading to stronger office attendance at the start of the week, according to the report released Tuesday.
About 80% of workers in Paris come in three times a week, compared to 62% in London. Paris also has the fewest people working entirely remotely, and the benefits of in-person work are instrumental in attracting fresh talent, making the city an outlier in pretty much every regard.
So where does this disparity between Paris and other cities come from? (Hint: It has to do with saving money.)
Public transport shouldn’t cost a fortune
Employers in the French capital are required to cover workers’ travel costs, making commutes far more affordable. More importantly, companies don’t just reimburse a symbolic amount as they cover 50% to 100% of employees’ public transport commutes.
Because of this only a quarter of Parisians identified reduced commuting costs as a benefit of hybrid work, contrasting with over 40% of Londoners.
“As these costs seem to be one of the main barriers to further returns to the office, this could be a large contributing factor to the high levels of office attendance in the French capital compared to other global cities,” the report said.
Transport costs can be a big headache for employees working in cities like London, especially because many of them moved away from city centers to the suburbs when the pandemic kicked in. That has increased the time and, as a result, the cost of commuting in recent years. London is by far the most expensive U.K. city to travel in and out of, making it a less enticing option for workers faced with RTO calls.
To be sure, some Parisians did resist employers’ calls back to the office. They demanded pay raises to stay on the job and cited commute hassles as a downside, indicating that workplace flexibility was a priority for them too. There’s also been a groundswell of support for a four-day workweek in the country with a rich history of worker-rights advocacy.
However, Paris-based employees have also been subject to stricter RTO mandates from their bosses, where the “sticks” come into play.
Making mandates…mandatory
Paris’s work culture is often about following what the employer wants. In fact, the Centre for Cities report found that Parisians are more compliant with RTO mandates than their employers need them to be. Some 87% of Paris employers insist on having specific office days—higher than other cities in the report.
This trend is unlike any other city surveyed by the think tank. For instance, there’s a sharp contrast between how often Toronto employees claim in-office attendance versus the reality of how often they’re actually in.
Employers will probably not expand their current mandates, according to the report. Still, not many employees would quit their jobs if that happened.
For a city as RTO-abiding as Paris, work does go back to how it was before 2020. However, office attendance in other cities like London, with greater support for WFH and a lower threshold of in-person mandates, office attendance might not increase much further.
London should probably take a page or two from Paris’s playbook, given its younger employees are raring to be in offices more than their senior counterparts.
“London has huge assets—world-class public transport, deep labour markets, and lots of cutting-edge firms,” Andrew Carter, CEO of Centre for Cities, said. “Encouraging more people back to the office, to be in line with other global cities, will enable the capital to continue to play the important national and international roles in the future.”
In the meantime, Paris gets to celebrate setting a new bar on all things RTO.
