Mr Murphy added: 'We’ve discovered nothing to make us believe a blended approach isn’t workable in the long term for most ‘office’ jobs.' Instead, it is left to the discretion of their manager. There is no company-wide rule on the minimum number of days that staff are required to work in the office. This is different to formal flexible working arrangements because it is more fluid, Mr Murphy said, and meant office workers were having regular conversations with their manager over their work patterns.

The Telegraph understands that the partnership had only been using half of the office space at the location, with some of the floors closed off entirely because so few staff are there.Īndrew Murphy, chief operating officer at John Lewis, last January wrote on LinkedIn that its current offices were 'no longer suitable for our needs' as the partnership had adopted what he termed a 'blended working' policy. Insiders insisted the office downsizing was not driven by cost-saving efforts, but about how much space John Lewis needed after staff embraced flexible working. It comes as the retailer scrambles to save money, having earlier this year warned it was ramping up plans to cut costs by £600m after inflation 'hit like a hurricane'. It occupies around 220,000 square feet of space at its offices in London Victoria, according to industry sources, and is seeking a location with about 100,000 square feet of office space. Sources suggested that the partnership is looking for offices which are less than half the size of its current headquarters. The John Lewis Partnership, which also owns Waitrose, is understood to have hired property experts from Tuckerman to help it find new offices in central London, with plans to move next year. John Lewis is slashing the size of its central London headquarters by more than half, after thousands of staff left their desks to work from home.

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