EY chair: ‘Nobody wants to go back to full time in the office’
Almost nobody will want to go back to working five days a week in the office post-pandemic, according to EY UK chair Hywel Ball, after employees have enjoyed the convenience of home working for most of 2020.
Speaking to City PM Ball said offices were likely to look very different post-pandemic, and that staff would want around two days per week working from home in the future.
“We know that offices will not look like they do now, we won’t have rows of hotdesks, that sort of stuff can be often done at home. However we will need many more meeting rooms and collaboration spaces and social spaces, because people are missing the social connection at work,” he said.
“My best guess is people will want to work two days a week at home three days in the office, something like that. They’ll want to enjoy the flexibility, less commute, but they’ll still want to come into the office to connect and build teams and to think about difficult problems and to learn.”
The coronavirus prompted 17,000 EY UK staff to start working from home overnight, as the UK went into lockdown and those who could started to work from home. Despite predicted changes to working patterns EY has no plans to shutter any offices.
In the financial year ending 3 July 2020 the Big Four firm’s fee income grew to £2.6bn, increasing slightly from £2.5bn in the previous year.
Average distributable profit per partner decreased from £679,000 in FY19 to £667,000 in FY20, and 10 per cent of distributable partner profits were retained due to Covid-19 uncertainty.
Virtual audit here to stay
The changes brought about by coronavirus meant the firm’s audit work went virtual this year. After months of having to carry out virtual audits, the chair said the firm would likely keep elements of future audits remote.
“Nobody knew whether we could audit remotely or not, it was that sort of uncertainty. So the first thing we had to do was to work with the regulators in the City to say ‘don’t panic if your company’s results are delayed, it’s not a sign of bad things, it’s just we’re tying to work out how to do everything’, and that was a massive issue to try to get the market to relax, because before then if a company delayed its results it was only because of bad news,” Ball said.
The Financial Reporting Council has now begun to inspect audits carried out by EY during the pandemic, and, according to the chair, EY is receiving good reviews.
“The regulator is happy with the audit work we did remotely… but it does cost more and there are inefficiencies – but there are efficiencies too,” he continued. “I hope that we will continue to do the efficient bits of virtual working on audit, and then we’ll do the inefficient bits physically.”