The End of the Traditional Office Working Environment?

Last year we wrote a post about how to work from home remotely. As we enter the third month of the new year, working from home is still part of our daily lives. In April 2020, statistics released by the UK’s Office of National Statistics showed 49.2% of adults in employment were working from home, as a result of social distancing measures introduced in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Scroll forward 9 months later and majority of the country is working from home if they’re not working in key-worker roles that require them to be on-site or work in construction.

A few days ago, the boss of Unilever, one of the UK’s biggest companies released a statement to say his office workers will never return to their desks five days a week. The pandemic has forced office staff to work from home in most of Unilever’s main markets, including the USA and UK. Whereas factory workers have been exempted from stay-at-home orders. Alan Jope said, “We anticipate never going back to five days a week in the office… That seems very old-fashioned now.”

Unilever isn’t the only company to have considered this change in the way we work. Twitter announced last year that it would allow employees to work from home “forever,” but office-building owners are hoping the current home-working pattern changes in the coming months.

Remote working is here to stay for many people, but will the traditional office environment ever return? When lockdowns were first introduced, the shift to remote working was hard for many people, as it was sudden and sweeping. Whilst many of us braced the challenges of figuring out a home routine that involves a full working day as well as home schooling our children, finding a way to be flexible and good to yourself, whilst finding the extra time to exercise and stay sane. But working from home brought challenges, whilst some were open to the new idea, others found it a big shock.

Will the office go back to its traditional environment, or will employers see this to use their office space differently and more effectively? Offices could be a space for group thinking, meetings, get-togethers with safe social distancing measures in place, the options are endless, but will most employees having to work from home the last year, it wouldn’t be surprising if returning to the office like it was before, maybe a distant memory. Thanks to the way technology is used and the availability of resources, tools, educational and business, it’s easy to assume the traditional office makes sense to stay within the home-life setting. Not to mention, most companies may start to take a balanced view of how the office setting may be as spend on office space, office equipment and use of facilities are being saved.

Here at Construction Marketing Experts (CME) we are working remotely and benefiting from the time savings technology is giving us. We can pass the time savings onto our clients by allocating travel time to delivery. We are also looking forward to being in the office again and having that face-to-face contact and when lockdown lifts we see a there being a balance between remote and office based working as key to a healthy working environment.

What are your views on how things will look in 2021?