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Europe’s WFH Culture War: The UK Leads as Most WFH-Friendly, While France Falls Behind

Between March 2020 and the end of 2021, the inherent connection between office work and physical offices was severed, as working from home became a necessity and then a possibility. Now, remote work has become a global contention point, with the U.K. leading Europe in embracing WFH, while France lags behind.

This article was written by Adam Gale and published in Fortune.

Sometime between March 2020 and the end of 2021, “office workers” ceased to be a thing.

“Offices” didn’t, of course, and nor did the kind of work that people typically did in offices before the pandemic. But the inherent connection between the two was irrevocably severed, as working from home became first a necessity, and then forever afterward a possibility.

Now, WFH has become a point of contention around the world, as workers clash with management over where people work and who gets to choose. As professor Mark Mortensen at business school Insead tells Fortune, “There is a culture war happening right now.”

Like most wars, the struggle over remote and hybrid working has multiple fronts. So where in Europe is WFH winning?

What does the data say?

The U.K. leads Europe in the home-working league table, according to the Global Survey of Working Arrangements (G-SWA), an authoritative annual study by leading economists into the behaviors and preferences of over 40,000 workers in 34 countries.

In fact, the average British employee with a graduate education spends twice as much time working remotely as their French counterparts—and three times more than those who are Greek. Countries that have actively targeted remote working foreign “digital nomads,” like Portugal and Italy, meanwhile, have middling levels.

Days working remotely per week, in selected European countries:

U.K. 1.8 (the same as the U.S.)
Germany 1.5
Netherlands/Italy/Spain/Sweden 1.2 (the same as the European average)
Portugal 1.0
France 0.9
Denmark 0.8
Greece 0.6

The average British employee with a graduate education spends twice as much time working remotely as their French counterparts—and three times more than their Greek ones.

G-SWA’s latest data was from the spring of 2023, but the pattern seems to be holding.

According to LinkedIn data prepared for Fortune, 41% of U.K. job postings on its platform were for hybrid roles in April 2024, compared with 32% for the wider Europe, the Middle East, and Africa region.

Britain also had the highest proportion of remote-only roles in Europe, at 9%—three times higher than in France and the Netherlands, which was the pre-pandemic leader in remote working.

Perhaps the most compelling indicator is transport usage figures. Analysis by the U.K. Department for Transport found that between May and June 2024, London Underground usage hit only between 75% and 87% of 2019 levels, with Mondays and Fridays consistently far below pre-pandemic averages.

For comparison, according to the Global Cities Survey 2024, Paris Rail had returned to 91% of pre-pandemic usership by the second quarter of 2023.