I have been thinking a lot about “Bob”. He was a US software developer who worked from home for a large company. In 2013, it emerged Bob had been outsourcing his own job to China. He sent a chunk of his own salary to a Chinese consulting firm to do his work so he could surf Reddit, trade on eBay, update Facebook, and watch cat videos, according to a blog post by Andrew Valentine of Verizon, who investigated the case. 

Bob’s cunning solution to the work-life balance conundrum is on my mind because of the troubling suggestion that if you work remotely, your employer could eventually realise you are eminently replaceable by someone else doing your task more cheaply on the other side of the world. Out of sight, out of mind, out of work.

An AlphaWise survey for Morgan Stanley last month showed only just over a third of UK office staff had returned to their usual workplace, compared with 83 per cent in France and 76 per cent in Italy. In a more recent YouGov poll of British adults, only 13 per cent firmly believed workers who could do their job from home should return to the office.