Is This The End Of The Office As We Know It?
The UK is slowly inching itself out of its nationwide lockdown – but many of us are still resorting to setting up office in our living rooms. Could the normal 9-5 be a thing of the past?
I never thought I would ever miss my usual 8.03 tube, but five months into home working and I would happily take an armpit in the face on a jam-packed Northern Line train for the rest of the year than have another day hunched in the corner of my tiny flat, working on a battered laptop that groans so heavily it’s practically asthmatic.
But it seems I’m very much in the minority when it comes to lamenting life away from an office desk. A recent survey by Theta Financial Reporting, as seen by Yahoo!, has revealed that 57% of workers don’t want to go back to the ‘normal way of working in an office environment’ post-lockdown, with an increasing number of companies now reporting that office workers needn’t come into the building until next year.
And it’s fair to say that, for some people anyway, home-working is a bit of an unexpected godsend. No matter how stuffy my pre-Covid daily train to Central London was, 20 minutes on the London Underground is far quicker (and not as costly) compared to many of my suburban counterparts who travelled in from the Home Counties.
With some commuters forced to suffer the often delayed National Rail Service for up to three hours a day, this chunk of time and money once dedicated to commuting, has now been used for more leisurely pursuits - bike rides, seeing loved ones from a reasonable distance or even just having a cheeky lie in.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for those working from home (WFH) – particularly if you’re already shelling out a small fortune to be living in London, where those on the lower end of the renting spectrum are highly unlikely to have a desk in their bedrooms (or anything that could even vaguely double-up as an office).
If you’re one of the #blessed few to have a work space, it’s likely to be a daily battle to get there first - as your housemate, who may also be working from home, will be looking for somewhere to settle for the day.
For many young people living in the capital, you’re likely to only be able to afford to do so by living in a house-share with people who you may have only met through Spareroom. The cramped conditions, limited resources and ongoing heatwave (the office aircon really wouldn’t have gone amiss right now!) are the ingredients for a perfect storm of rising tensions.
While sitcoms have pushed the dreamy idea that we’re all bosom pals with the girl in the bedroom opposite ours, in reality there are several hundreds of people in London who may be stuck living with people they don’t like. Hell, I live with my boyfriend, who I usually quite like, and I’d more than happily not see him for a week.
For some, the office is more than just a place we sit at a bank and type until around 5pm - it’s a lifeline for your social life, allowing us to establish connections with like-minded people through regular rituals of tea runs, meetings and moaning.
Sending snarky Slack messages to your work wife from home doesn’t have the same boost to your social metre as grabbing five minutes in a meeting room to properly vent your frustrations.
And while for some, offices are grey cubicles with crappy kettles and peeling wallpaper, for others they are hubs of opportunity to encourage blue-sky thinking. I’m not talking about the offices that think they’re Google because they’ve stuck a foosball table in the corner of the staffroom. I mean just all sitting down together in a meeting room and having a decent conversation that doesn’t rely on an internet connection, a webcam and your cat not interrupting your conversation.
It’s something that many have failed to acknowledge in the supposed WFH utopia. When your home becomes your office, the divide between work and home life becomes increasingly blurred. You can’t so easily forget a rough day in the office when your living quarters are the office too.
A study by Liberty Games shows that 38% of people are working longer hours from home while 29% admit feeling more stressed when working in the home environment as we can no longer put some space between what we do for a living and where we are actually living.
With the coronavirus pandemic not showing any signs of going away any time soon, we shouldn’t race back to the office and put others at risk. But with an increasing number of people discussing making working from home an indefinite change, we need to consider the cons as well as the pros of taking the office home with you.
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Written by Kimberley Bond
