Will the office become the next coronavirus casualty?

Tech offices are famous for their perks and architectural flourishes. But in the past few days, these shrines to company culture have been far less bustling than usual. Last week Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Google encouraged employees to work from home as dozens of cases of coronavirus were reported close to their headquarters.

Facebook closed its London outpost and more than 1000 workers at Canary Wharf were sent home. In China, many employees have been barred from their desks for weeks.

If Covid-19 spreads in the same way in the West, we are probably about to embark on an unprecedented experiment in remote working. And when or if the world returns to normality, the traditional office may not.

Shares in Zoom — a video calling service used for remote meetings — have risen 66 per cent this year. Slack, the corporate chat app, is up 15 per cent. In China, downloads of remote working apps such as Alibaba’s DingTalk and Tencent Conference increased twelvefold from January to February, according to data provider Sensor Tower. Dozens of industry conferences around the world have been cancelled and many are now being replaced with live-streamed meetings.

The remote work revolution has been predicted before. In the mid-90s, the US Government launched a push to have tens of thousands of staff work from home, and IBM encouraged policies that would ultimately result in 40 per cent of its staff working remotely.

But the office refused to die. The threat of being laid off during the financial crisis encouraged presenteeism. Steve Jobs, an icon for tech entrepreneurs, believed the best ideas came from office encounters. In 2013, Yahoo’s chief executive Marissa Mayer told staff who worked at home to find a desk or quit. And in 2017, IBM unwound its own commitment and directed employees back on site.

It is not hard to come up with arguments against working from home. In an age of infinite distractions, it is harder to keep tabs on workers. A lack of face-to-face communication might also slow group work.

But smartphones have already turned us all into remote workers. Staff are available through email or text message at all hours.

Faster internet and better software also bring the workplace closer to home. There has been an explosion of programs for task management, communication and document sharing, hosted online rather than installed on office PCs. This has,

Once employees have been given a taste of remote work, companies may be forced to offer it to attract talent.

almost by stealth, made physical access to an office less necessary.

Consumer website Product Hunt has a workforce that stretches from Los Angeles to Birmingham — it now has no one in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where tech workers command inflated salaries. Project planning service Gitlab says its annual staff retention is 85 per cent, double the industry average, because employees can move continents without being forced to move jobs.

Environmental concerns, rising congestion and the increased cost of living in major metropolitan areas also explain why companies might allow workers to do their jobs from anywhere.

But if these were good reasons for working from home before, the coronavirus outbreak intensifies the argument.

Although it might minimise disruption, surviving the move to remote working could yet prove to be a double-edged sword. When the time comes to order employees back to their desks, some might refuse.

If staff can show they are just as productive without sitting in meetings, or spending hours every week commuting, they may be justified in asking why they should.

And once employees have been given a taste of remote work, companies may be forced to offer it to attract talent.

The office is not an obvious casualty of the coronavirus, but this could be a test from which it does not fully recover.