… as people take stock of their work/life balance.
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Recent pieces have looked at the possible trend towards head office decentralization in favour of home and local branch working:
Decentralization and technology-enabled home working – Vision Group for Sidmouth
The working from home revolution – Vision Group for Sidmouth
Redesigning where and how we work – Vision Group for Sidmouth
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A comment received from a correspondent notes:
Also there may be implications for the housing stock across the rural countryside as people take stock of their work/life balance and consider moving out of the cities.
Which might indeed have an effect on local house prices and availability:
Affordable housing in Sidbury – Vision Group for Sidmouth
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Meanwhile at the beginning of the month, the Times (paywall) reported on a survery saying that “Sixty per cent of respondents said they would to return to work immediately if allowed, but 35 per cent would prefer to work from home three to four days a week:”
One in three would rather not go back to the office after lockdown | News | The Times
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And over the last weeks there has been a huge amount of media interest and a huge diversity of opinion on WFH: Working From Home…
These are the stories from the last couple of days:
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How WFH became a reality & why it is here to stay!
Today, scores and scores of companies have not only shifted their work to a remote-working model but are also making long-term strategies to include WFH in their work sphere. A lot many companies in the days to come will realize the productivity gains of WFH and opt for it out of choice and not force…
In the end, WFH is a win-win for all. While the employees can work and cut down on their travel, the companies too gain in terms of lesser infrastructure spend. They can cut down on their leasing costs by having a portion of their employees working from home. Little wonder, WFH is going to stay with us for a long-long time…
One in three would rather not go back to the office after lockdown | News | The Times
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Working from home: a living hell
A post-Covid ‘WFH’ regime will allow bosses to snoop as never before and isolate workers from each other.
Here’s Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain. He’s told employees that half of them will be WFH within a decade – and that those moving to cheap areas of America would get correspondingly lower salaries. Oh, and if they cheat the system, they face ‘severe ramifications’, as the Zuck monitors their internet addresses to check they’re not lying about their location.
Working from home: a living hell – spiked
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Is WFH here to stay? With network issues, wrecked employee morale & security threats, the answer is not that simple
Due to coronavirus, office workers around the world were forced to participate in world’s biggest telecommuting experiment…
In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, some predicted that machines would free people from work altogether: everyone could be an idle aristocrat. And yet humanity did not take that path, because there’s a basic human pleasure derived from jointly tackling tasks, if only for an excuse to gab. “The small talk over coffee, or on the way to lunch – these are the moments that have disappeared,” said Gurle of Symphony. “I don’t know what is the cost of that – that soft world around the hard world of work. I have not found a substitute.”
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WFH to remain the norm for almost 70% of British adults
A study of 1,000 UK adults conducted by insight agency Opinium in May 2020 looked to gauge changes in internet habits and usage before and during lockdown. It found that seven out of 10 British adults are now working from home at least some of the time, with three in five believing this will be all the time or much more frequently than before the pandemic.
WFH to remain the norm for almost 70% of British adults | total telecom