Working from home is massively under utilised in the UK simpky because management don't trust people to actually do the work.
There's certainly an element of that at the company I currently work for. The MD is known for her micro-managing style - she has even been known to wait by the front door, taking a register, as a means of discouraging lateness.
However, much of the reluctance to allow working from home has been because we currently don't have the infrastructure to make it work easily. From what I understand, our servers are working on fairly old tech and remote connections are slow at the best of times - even when it's only a small number of people trying to access them. There's also a sense of paranoia about the nature of the work we do, which requires watertight practices to ensure confidentiality (hence even within the office there are very tight restrictions on who can access which servers).
Once it became apparent that it was likely to be a necessity for everyone to work from home, they started putting measures in place to ensure business could carry on as usual. Then it became apparent that it was going to come in sooner rather than later, so they accelerated the implementation, but with limited IT resources could hardly keep up with demand. Then last Monday the lockdown was imposed, and it has been clear this week that despite these efforts, we were not fully prepared as a company, with numerous glitches still to be ironed out.
After speaking to our main client this week, I do feel we're somewhat better prepared than them, though.
As a result of all this, I feel somewhat better disposed towards our company's stance on WFH as a general principle. The CEO said on our last day in the office that she didn't intend WFH to become the norm after this is all over, but she has already had her mind changed on a number of things, and she may have to face the reality of it becoming a necessity in future.
However, while the tech already exists to make WFH a practical possibility, many companies are in the same boat as mine, being reliant on out-of-date infrastructure, and transitioning may not be as straightforward as some imagine (see the ongoing AUK upgrade debacle for an example of some of the problems many organisations face).
Another reason for the reluctance to make WFH the norm is that the nature of the business we do relies on face-to-face communication. Even with all the tech in the world, collaborative working is still most efficient when everyone is in the same room. I know this from having spent four years working from home in my previous job. So again, I'm more or less on the bosses' side on this one.
So people being slackers who will bunk off at any opportunity is only a small part of the problem - that happens in any working environment, and being able to identify weak links and deal with them appropriately is down to good hands-on management.