Express & Star

Friday home working scrapped at Frasers Group

Office staff at Frasers Group will no longer be allowed to work from home on Fridays,

Published
Office staff at Frasers have been told they can't work at home of Fridays any more

A memo from the retail group's chief operating officer, David Al-Mudallal, said some staff were "not treating Friday as a working day" and there were too many examples of people not being contactable when they needed to be.

Frasers Fridays started as a flexible working policy in 2020.

The group, which includes the Frasers store in Wolverhampton's Mander Centre and House of Fraser in Telford, said the firm now believed people worked better in an office and that collaboration was key to delivering value.

Mr Al-Mudallal told staff that some of their social media profiles were demonstrating that they were not treating Friday as a working day and Fridays had become an unproductive day of the week.

The group, which includes Sports Direct and Evans Cycles, is owned by Sports Direct founder and retail billionaire Mike Ashley, who handed over the day-to-day running of his retail empire to his future son-in law, Michael Murray, in May.

Bosses at Frasers Group had been measuring the productivity of staff on Fridays since the start of the flexible working scheme and decided to pull people back into the office.