Employers too would have considered new ways of office working, which they would have learned with the experiment over the past ten weeks.
by Victor Cherubim
Some 80 days have passed since the “working from home experiment” began. To some, it was akin to going “Around the world in 80 days,” on a virtual tour. Many soothsayers may have predicted the death of the office, perhaps, a permanent shift to working differently. Looking to a future beyond social distancing, washing, and cleaning hands and the use of various types of hand sanitizer, just imagine for a moment what will the future of work look like?
Will people be sat at home for much of the day, with wife working on one side and children watching Dad on the keyboard and listening to the numerous calls with clients, customers and both Dad and Mum wondering the nuances on their children’s faces?
Will work people even want to return to an office environment, after the somewhat cosy time at home?
Researchers at Gensler “Work from Home Survey 2020” have advanced that “some 32 percent of “work from home” people have experienced feelings of social isolation, while 30 percent have found it hard to focus, and approximately 25 percent have experienced lower levels of motivation, too many distractions or being less than productive.”
We have heard stories reported in local papers of couples sitting on either side of the kitchen table, taking it in turns to make calls, as well as workers in one bed flats working from their sofas, with a cup of coffee on one hand and another hand around the waist of their youngest child supporting and comforting them!
Where have the lines between work and home become blurred?
Will work from home endure?
At the same time there is also the expectation that the office they would have to return to, will be significantly different to the one they left on the 23 March 2020.
Many workers have expressed a wish and asked their employers if they be allowed to start work at home and come to office after the early rush hour,to avoid crowded trains and buses.
Employers in turn have had to rethink “working practices,” what needs to change in the office environment for the new normal? What new rules, procedures, call it “new trends and tricks, if not work habits” employers can make for better productivity?
Employers too would have considered new ways of office working, which they would have learned with the experiment over the past ten weeks.
Would it be farfetched to contemplate that the whole act of going “back to work again” is in some sense like admitting a kindergarten child, on the first day at school?
Would workpeople go back to a “better” office and “work life” or would it be the same old office again, with more posters about what not to do at work?
What would be the new office layout? In the context of the changes instigated by “following the science” and the recommendations of the Government, will the new office set up be more user friendly, more inviting for those who got “spoilt” by working in their lounge, their kitchen or dining room over the past home working time?
What may come of this experiment, could it be “office redesign”, quiet spaces to allow concentration, places to collaborate and rooms dedicated for those “Zoom” webinars or Microsoft “Teams” calls?
It has been a difficult task for me, retired from work, many, many years ago to research
what would be the new look office in the City of London? Besides, stretching my imagination, I could imagine itcould breathe new life into what would be the look of the “New Office,” with all sorts of change taking place.
I would imagine, onlya guess, the “Future Office” will be much different in a variety of following ways:
The New Office could be a place to collaborate, innovate and accelerate change, a more sustainable way of working away from home. Will the new office space be more conducive to be considerate of others as well as kinder to ourselves and our health?
Technology is influencing what we do at work as well as how and where we work.
In the old Shipping office that I worked in the City of London many years ago, we had a lunch hour with a visit to the nearest pub for a pint, and of course “bread and cheese” and talked endlessly in “cockney” about the next football game played by West Ham F.C.
As sporting events are yet to open in UK after the virus, the talk of the town will most probably centre around how and what the children of working class families learned having both parents with them “all of the time”.
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