Keep the best parts of remote working

● How and where we work has changed so much in the past 12 months due to the pandemic, and many of us will be reluctant to give up some of our new work habits.

“Employers must now work harder to establish how their offices and workplace policies can support health and wellbeing,” says Linda Trim, director at office design specialist Giant Leap. She advises:

Employees have got used to the autonomy of working from home and are likely to miss it if they are forced to give it up. “Our pre-Covid research has consistently shown that people who spend at least a portion of their typical work week outside the office have higher workplace satisfaction and score higher on indicators of innovation.”

The choice to work from home is attractive to most workers. “We find that employers who provide a spectrum of choices … were seen as more innovative and higher performing.”

Despite having to share your home workspace with a partner and/or children, working from home gives open-plan workers much-needed privacy. “The trend towards more open environments has led to the rise of shared or unassigned seating … to the detriment of space for focusing or personal use