The coronavirus pandemic is set to change our relationship with the office forever. Jesse Stott and George Lancaster, University Business Centre Coordinators at Leeds Beckett University, consider how companies can react.
The Covid-19 pandemic has closed our offices and made working from home the norm. This transition, in turn, has brought its own challenges: childcare, home distractions, digital and physical office environment limitations, loneliness, and for some the ‘tainting’ of the home as a haven from work.
Some companies, as they begin to look at ways of returning to the workplace, will be asked to accommodate their teams wanting to stick with the flexibility of working from home more permanently. This may not mean working from home 100% of the working week, but rather that employees are given more choice about their work settings than they have previously.
Offices will need to be used differently to accommodate social distancing. How companies can react practically to this, combined with the demand for more employee work flexibility, will be the key to effective office space of the future.
