We’ve adopted a different work/life balance
With millions of people now used to working from home, what does it mean for the future of the office?
Around half of the UK’S working population has been working from home since the end of March, and in many cases quite happily, navigating adeptly between work and home life. Thanks to tech solutions and Zoom calls making face-to-face meetings unnecessary, the world of work has been transformed. The question now is: what happens next?
Some business experts believe that we won’t return to our office-based way of working and flexible working is here to stay.
Professor Sir Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology at Manchester Business School, says employers and employees benefit. ‘Working flexibly works,’ says Professor Cooper. ‘People are more satisfied, more productive and there is less absenteeism. Employers will like the fact that they can get rid of a lot of expensive office space, crunching three floors down to one.’
Certainly, UK employees are expecting long-term change. Half of those surveyed by O2 for its Flexible Future of Work report think they will be spending less time in an office. A third expect to work at least three days a week more from home, and 81% expect to work at least one day a week from home.
So will companies actually need offices any more? Twitter is one company that has already told its staff they can continue to work at home ‘for ever’ if they so wish.
Professor Cooper sees offices becoming more of a hub to pop into, perhaps sharing space with other companies. Workers will come in to get their social fix and water-cooler catch-ups, but most will not do so every day. ‘It is no longer going to be a case of getting on the train or in the car at 7.30am to commute to an office and then doing a long day at your desk,’ he says. ‘People will work flexibly, partly from home and partly from a central office.’
Annie Auerbach, author of Flex: The Modern Woman’s Handbook, has long been a supporter of flexible working, and says it’s now difficult for firms to argue against it. ‘Companies that had long insisted flexible working wouldn’t work were scrambling to make it a reality,’ she says. ‘The barriers melted away. Something that flexibleworking pioneers have been pushing for suddenly tipped over into the mainstream, and now it will be hard to go back.’
‘There will still be a place for a workplace,’ says Annie, ‘but its function will change, incorporating more of a blend of home and office working. We’ll likely see people coming in for core hours. Rather than sitting alone at their work stations, they’ll spend that time together, talking, collaborating and exchanging ideas.’
Christine Armstrong, a writer and researcher of work trends, says that people have very different ideas of what they want to happen next. ‘One report shows that 22% of Londoners never want to work from home again,’ she explains. ‘Meanwhile, another study shows 24% of people never want to go back to their place of work. So you have this real tension between these two groups and I think it’s going to be difficult to reconcile that.’
One issue for employers is the fact that if people are choosing to just ‘pop’ into the office for meetings, it is likely that they will want to do so at the same time, and that will be hard to manage while adhering to social distancing.
While Christine expects to see offices start to open by the autumn, she believes it will take a year or two for them to get back to a settled pattern.
81% of people surveyed expect to be able to work at least one day a week from home after lockdown