Billionaire entrepreneur says letting people work from home is 'staggeringly self-defeating'

Founder of the Dyson company, designer James Dyson, is estimated to be worth $15.4 billion.

Billionaire British inventor and businessman James Dyson recently said that allowing employees to continue working from home is "staggeringly self-defeating." He was referring to UK's plans to allow people to do so.

"The government talks loftily of the UK being a 'science and technology superpower' while doing everything it can to achieve the exact opposite," Dyson, the founder and chief engineer of multinational technology company Dyson Ltd, wrote in a December 8 opinion piece for The Times.

The UK government has been working on new legislation according to which, workers will have the right to request flexible working arrangements even on their first day of work.

Although the move is attempted to encourage flexible working in the country, Dyson thinks that it is a "misguided approach" that will "generate friction between employers and employees" during the ongoing global recession.

He added that without control over where their employees can work, "high-growth, ambitious companies" like Dyson Ltd would hesitate to invest in the country. The company has about 3,500 employees in the UK.

"We have seen from our own experience at Dyson during periods of government-enforced working from home how deeply inefficient it is," Dyson wrote. "It prevents the collaboration and in-person training that we need to develop new technology and maintain competitiveness against global rivals."

Read more: Remote employee not disclosing location cost this startup $500,000: Report

James Dyson, with a net worth of $15.4 billion according to Bloomberg, is not alone in taking this stand this stand.

In August, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon too had stated that remote work "slows down honesty and decision-making."

Tech billionaire and the richest person on Earth, Elon Musk, too has been strictly against letting his employees work from home.

Read more: Elon Musk ends ‘work from home’ for Twitter staff