Who is working from the office actually better for?

For many commuters, working from home is not about comfort. It is about the hours lost when trains are delayed or fail to arrive. Martine Kopstad Floeng, a union representative and train commuter, questions the claim that more office attendance automatically improves working life.

She accepts that offices have value. New employees need to meet colleagues, professional communities need to develop, and informal conversations can produce useful work. But she rejects the idea that these benefits justify a general assumption that more physical attendance means better results.

Flexible work can also make it possible for people to live outside Norway’s largest cities while working where their skills are needed, she argues. That sits uneasily with ambitions for vibrant local communities and a country in which opportunities are not concentrated around the biggest office centres.

Floeng does not advocate five days of home working. She also acknowledges that some employees do not thrive remotely and that a workplace where colleagues barely know one another is not a healthy working environment.

The question, she says, has no single answer. She points to SINTEF researchers who have cited studies finding that hybrid workers maintain the same productivity as employees working entirely from the office, while fewer hybrid employees leave. The research also suggests workers can complete tasks more efficiently when they have influence over where and when they work. For Floeng, that makes cooperation between employers and employees more useful than allowing an employer’s preference to determine the arrangement.