Is the office making a comeback?

It was Mark Twain who came up with the memorable line that reports of his death had been exaggerated when his obituary was inadvertently reported in a newspaper. But I’m beginning to think the same might be true of the office, whose long-term future has been put in serious question as a result of working from home during the pandemic.

For a time, it looked as though high levels of remote working would continue in the long term and that put a big question mark over the need for significant office capacity in city centres, with a whole range of consequences, not least for high street businesses.

It’s true that some businesses are finding working from home suits both them and their staff and they are happy that levels of productivity are satisfactory. However, at a recent Initiative meeting there seemed to be a groundswell of enthusiasm for a return to the office, maybe not five days a week, but certainly at higher levels than is currently the case, which is good news for demand.

People were saying that staff coming back into the office had been reminded of what they had been missing – the social side of work, informal upskilling, working creatively face to face with colleagues in the general hubbub of a busy office, forging team spirit and developing a loyalty to the business.

That’s particularly true for younger workers who have missed out on the normal development benefit of rubbing shoulders with more experienced colleagues. It will be some time before we properly understand the consequences of opportunities they have missed, but there are already stories of people doing less well in professional qualifications than previously was the case, so the impact is already showing up.

Some of our members are recognising what they are calling a war for talent and part of that is a demand for flexible working, but there is an emerging view that some businesses find that difficult and there’s a limit to how far they can go. One member has experimented with what they call an “anchor day” when as many staff as are able come into the office. That’s a way of helping people to re-grow relationships and could lead to more staff opting to spend greater amounts of time in the office.

There is a broad acknowledgement that working practices have changed forever and this is generating new thinking, which certainly includes the office. One interesting idea being talked about is creating buildings which contain both office and housing, which would be a way of providing people with workspace and affordable accommodation while solving the problems of having to commute into the centre of the city. That would require quite a bit of imaginative thinking in Bath, on the part of developers and planners but there are examples where it works elsewhere – for example in Barcelona, where multistorey buildings offer a mix of living and working spaces which also contribute to a vibrant city centre in the evenings.

If you’d like to find out more about the Bath Chamber of Commerce or the Initiative in B&NES, please contact us on 01225 460 655 or info@ bathchamber.co.uk.