Lots of people have written about the “New world of remote working” (so much so, that that phrase has become a cliche in the space of six months). But I think it’s still an interesting topic, because I have a hunch the changes we’ve seen in 2020 will become permanent, even as we start to move out of lockdown.
I agree with the comments many have made, that “The genie won’t go back in the bottle” (another cliche…). I struggle to see a scenario where we’ll all go back to the old way of working – 5 days a week in a single, centralised office. Why? Because it’s working better now from both sides.
First, compare the old and the new as an employee. Work pre-March was long commutes either pumping CO2 in to the air in your car, or squashing in to a train carriage, losing hours of your day in both cases, to sit in an office and stare at your screen, out for a £6 Pret sandwich at lunchtime, then home, exhausted. If you manage to fit the £80-a-month gym trip in there, great, but you’re home even later.
Now? Count the ways in which work has improved for the employee:
- Firstly, the instant time saving on the commute. No commute takes less than 30 minutes, and often much more, if you add in a tube ride, or traffic problems. So many people are immediately getting 1-3 hours of their lives back.
- Cost of the commute. Either petrol savings, or season ticket. This can easily add up to hundreds of pounds a month.
- Lunch – eating at home is generally cheaper than buying from sandwich shops. I know that’s tough on the city-based sandwich shops, but more on that later.
- Health – eating at home can easily be more healthy than eating out-and-about. You can spend 10 mins prepping something in a kitchen, making it much easier to do something good for you.
- Exercise – going for a run is much easier (with that saved time), or a lunchtime cycle ride if preferred. Pilates classes on Zoom are also easier if you’re not having to find somewhere to change afterwards.
- Flexibility. A big one I believe – being able to organise your work-life balance is much easier when WFH. A simple example, if your kid needs dropping off at the school gate at 8:40am, you can do that and be back at your desk for 9am. That simply doesn’t work if you have a 1 hour commute to London. So you need to have nannies or lean on friends/family. Additionally, there are benefits like “Being in for the builder/delivery”, getting the washing done, finishing an hour early to go and see family/friends and so on. A lot of this stems back to point 1 – the time saved no longer spent on the long commute.
Secondly, what about the employer? Unlike the list above, I think there really is only one of note – but it’s a big one, and one that matters to every employer: the cost of running an enormous office, often in an expensive central location. Recently, the city law firm, Slater and Gordon have given up their London office – why keep it? After salaries, office costs are often one of the biggest bills for an org, and it just doesn’t seem necessary any more.
There is an additional important point here as well – not so much a benefit for employees, but a worry that didn’t turn out to be true. A lot of companies worried about productivity drops in a remote world. But that simply hasn’t been the case – if anything productivity of employees has actually improved, as people adapt to the new ways of working and gain the benefits listed above.
Seismic shifts like this one tend to only happen when it’s good for “both sides”. Of course there are people who will lose out from this shift – property developers in the cities, sandwich shops in central locations and so on. And of course, I’ve completely ignored some of the problems caused by remote working – isolation for employees, loss of cohesive for company culture, and many more.
But my point is that I struggle to see a way back. The new world will be one of mixed models – some WFH, perhaps visits to new, smaller offices for 1-2 days a week, perhaps for team events only. Most office work is spent starting at a screen (for better or worse), and that can now be done more cheaply, and with a better use of everyone’s time, with more people doing this from home.
What impact will this have?
Firstly, I think the benefits above will become embedded in company working models. Meaning – companies will lower their annual rent costs and related costs (office maintenance etc). And employees will just get used to be able to manage their work around their lives and vice-versa. This will become expected of any role – any job that asks you to be in a central London location for 8:30am will become far less attractive, as employees raise their expectations of working life – suddenly this will become a big negative on a job ad, rather than just an accepted necessity.
But I think there are two more big additional changes that will happen, one about the towns and cities we all live in, the second about how we look for jobs going forward.
One of the problems with everyone WFH-ing, is that the whole infrastructure around centralised office work is struggling. If you were running a sandwich shop, book shop, stationary shop, gift shop or similar next to a city law firm in January, it’s hard to see how your business will return. And that really is a shame, particular when your business is failing through no fault of your own.
But that misses the point that, the need for these services is just the same – it’s just the location has changed. if there’s a movement of, say, 50% of office workers to be at home, then naturally the environment around peoples’ homes will flourish instead. So we’ll start to see new bakeries, new local shops, new cafes sprouting up in heavily residential areas, particularly as lockdown ends and people want to head out for lunch a bit more. This could be a real resurgence for some areas that have struggled to date.
More than this though, I think we will see different impacts for different areas. I know the South East of England best, and I’d suggest there are two types of town outside London, whose fortunes will change. Firstly, there are cities/towns like Cambridge (where I live now) and Bury St Edmunds (where I was brought up). Both are great places to live, each with their own character. But they’ve always struggled from being just a-little-too-far from London to commute regularly. It’s possible, but a little exhausting. That’s always kept the population down for these towns, because it’s really not commuter-territory if you want to work in London. But that’s not a problem anymore! You can get a job “in London” and now work 3-5 days a week from your flat in Cambridge. This should significantly increase the numbers in these areas, leading to growth of local infrastructure.
Secondly, there are places which have always been commuter towns – 30 minutes to London by train, but without a whole lot going on there (few local restaurants, cafes etc). These towns could go two ways – either they’ll start to get that infrastructure too, forced by all the local residents (no longer commuting to London), who want nice places to eat and drink. Alternatively (and hopefully not), they’ll struggle as people move away over time – if the only reason you lived there was the commute, and that’s no longer relevant well, why stay?
The other side to this coin though, and I’d suggest an even bigger change, is how the world of work opens up for you as an employee (and also, as an employer of course). Most job searches start with location – “I’m looking for a Java developer role within 45 minutes of Reading”. But if you remove that constraint, the world is suddenly your oyster! Well, the country anyway. If you only have to visit the office 1 day a week (or even less), you don’t mind a 2 hour commute both ways. Suddenly you can get a role based half-way across the country. As an employee, you can start looking for the things you really care about – the actual role, company culture, the domain and so on, rather than being artificially constrained by geography.
This democratisation of work, will positively impact the good employers too. Some employers will be worried (“What if all my employees leave, now they can all look further afield?!”). But that misses the point – as an employer you can now look further afield for talent. And this will have a positive effect for great employers who genuinely care about their employees, their culture and the work they do. The knock-on effect here will be that, good employers who don’t allow remote working will find themselves struggling against those that do.
Again, I want to re-iterate, I’m knowingly ignoring many of the problems that remote-working will bring. I’m not denying those are there. And I think a 100% remote-working world (without any physical interaction with colleagues, either for work, team, or social events) is not something I would find attractive.
But I feel the benefits of the new hybrid world outweigh the downsides for employers and employees both. And because it’s beneficial for both parties, I think the current changes will stick even once the vaccine is available. Why go back to something less productive, more polluting, more expensive and less flexible, now that we’ve all seen something better!?