What happens now?

[Rorschach]

Partner has been working from home since April last year. Office only open to those who really couldn't work from home. She has been informed that no matter what happens now things are never going back to the way they were. Office time will be part time only, you will need to book a desk if you want to go in, and really they will only be going into the office for things that are very hard to do remotely such as multi-person meetings, training etc. I am hearing on grape vine that this is going to be commonplace in her sector and probably in lots of other places as well.
Whatever we think of it, this will be the new normal. I don't want to dredge up arguments on how we got here, they have been done to death and we all know each other's views. Less office working and more remote working was probably always going to be the future anyway, C19 has just accelerated that.

My interest is what happens now. What do we think happens to all those industries that are linked to office working? Public transport, car parks, sandwich shops, coffee shops etc. What will happen to those businesses and their properties, what will happen to office blocks? What will happen to the pensions linked to commercial property (there are a lot!).

 

[Gary]

Things get worse for all involved.

 

[NickVanBeest]

Regarding the properties, maybe convert them (properly) into accommodation, and relieve the housing shortage?

 

[Spectric]

very hard to do remotely such as multi-person meetings,

Have they not heard of video conferencing, no not zoom but more profesional link ups.

 

[Spectric]

There will be losers and unfortunately many companies will use this as part of streamlining their business, so many direct jobs will go as well as the others that feed off the office workers. The software used on the computers to monitor a users contributions (Big brother) and to measure their performance will equally be a tool for thining out, you may be working at home but the boss is actually watching you so. I knew a company that produced software that could literally record every keystroke on a Pc and timestamp plus other abilities.

 

[paulrbarnard]

My company made this shift back in February. We down sized our office building by 50%. People now come in to the office when they need to. People like it and we have not had any issues.
As to what happened to the support industries around the offices, well they adapt or die. Many 'traditional' support businesses are closing but you see many examples of new businesses filling new roles.
I would like to see a lot of the office space converted to housing. City centers are currntly dead spaces. New accommodation in cities will bring back more local shopping, reasturants and lessure businesses. The concept of the 15 minute city could finaly be realised.

 

[Rorschach]

There will be losers and unfortunately many companies will use this as part of streamlining their business, so many direct jobs will go as well as the others that feed off the office workers. The software used on the computers to monitor a users contributions (Big brother) and to measure their performance will equally be a tool for thining out, you may be working at home but the boss is actually watching you so. I knew a company that produced software that could literally record every keystroke on a Pc and timestamp plus other abilities.

They use that kind of stuff already, not a new thing to home working. Studies show people who work at home on average work more hours and are more productive, so probably a good thing in that regard.

 

[paulrbarnard]

There will be losers and unfortunately many companies will use this as part of streamlining their business, so many direct jobs will go as well as the others that feed off the office workers. The software used on the computers to monitor a users contributions (Big brother) and to measure their performance will equally be a tool for thining out, you may be working at home but the boss is actually watching you so. I knew a company that produced software that could literally record every keystroke on a Pc and timestamp plus other abilities.

This could also be done as far back as 1982. I know because I wrote one. I got in big trouble with the factory trade union over it. It was done innocently enough to discover which tasks were taking the longest so that the tasks could be stream lined. Unfortunately there is often more than one use for data.
Most enlightened industries focus on resultrs based monitoring rather than key presses or time sat at a desk. I agree objectives with my team and they deliver against them. If they can deliver them working one day a week sat on the beach then thats their gain. The reality it that we are pretty good at estimating the effort involved.
I remember one insidence many years ago. We had one team member who was not ar strong as the rest. As a consequence he tended to work longer hours but still didn't match the output of the stringest team members. One year we came to review time and the MD insisted that our weak link was the best person in the company. His logic was that he had come early to the office to see who was working and had left late on other occations and this guy was in the office both times. We had a heck of a game explaining to the MD how coding output was not directly linked to time sta at the computer. It brings to mind the Dilbert cartoon where Wally says "I'm writing me a minivan" when the pointy hair boss offers a bonus for bug found.

 

[porker]

Similar for myself, I have not been in the office or seen any of my work colleagues since last March. Our company has told us we will be homeworking until at least the end of June (and that was announced in November) so I probably won't see anyone for over a year! We already had a working practice that meant that we had all the infrastructure like web conferencing etc. on a daily basis. My boss lives in Switzerland and I work with people in Japan, India and the US mainly. Working for a telco provider I hadn't really realised that there was a large portion of the office based workforce where this way of working wasn't 'normal'. I used to work in the office 4 days a week despite a daily 3 hours in the car and no real reason other than to be with my work colleagues. That I do miss, but from a purely work perspective I prefer the present arrangements but I think many will need some real face to face interaction. No matter how good the technology is, there is no substitute for face to face sometimes. All this has also proved that there was largely no need for all these executives to be flying round the world or for me to rack up thousands of miles to sit at a desk and hook up to a computer to speak to someone halfway round the world.

I wouldn't want to be in commercial property right now as my own company has downsized their office and I think if they didn't have a long lease they would close them. There will be winners and losers like all things but this step change is too quick for some businesses to adapt.

I think we need to think of the human elements involved though. Humans are social creatures and want to interact on the whole. Also this relentless drive for more and more 'efficiency' has a detrimental effect in the long term on people. I've worked in company cultures where the bottom 10% get the chop each year. After a couple of years of no growth you are chopping good people and you know eventually it will be your turn.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I was going to write a longish screed, but I think "Your guess is as good as mine, and forecasts are usually wrong" probably summarises it.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Covid has forced, within the space of a year, changes that may otherwise have taken 5-10 years to happen. Online shopping and WFH being two major changes.

There are some obvious issues to work through before some sort of status quo returns - although a complete reversal is most unlikely:

• general prognosis - everybody will try to offload losses and debt to the next in the chain - eg: commercial property can't fund debt obligations, insolvency, banks lose money, Treasury bail outs
• commercial property will suffer massive losses. Many companies are locked into long leases - not all property will become vacant at once.
• existing high streets will need to reinvent themselves - or become an unappealing row of charity shops and £ stores. Need a far greater cultural and social content to attract people.
• city centres in their current form will die leaving only the most flexble and innovative. Over time city centres will have a far healthier mix of people, offices, leisure etc. Will take 5-10 years.
• 100% WFH will be unlikely due to training, multi-person meetings, new staff integration etc. I suspect it will vary by individual jobs with 1-3 days a week in the office.
• it is easy to WFH if you have the space. Many don't. Expect to see more local rent by the hour/day/week hubs emerging and local infrastructures being reinvigorated.

 

[billw]

I think (and perhaps hope) that what happens is that people are no longer forced to congregate with people who have the same employer, but with people from their same community.

So whoever you work for, you'll do so remotely. Instead of going to a coffee shop in a city centre you'll go to one in your locality. You'll use a local sandwich shop, a local store, etc. Your friends and social circle will be those who live around you, and you can choose which group to circulate with rather than forced to hang out with who your employer likes.

@Terry - Somerset points are very valid - city centres can become residential and leisure hubs instead of work and shop centres.

I find these campaigns to "save the high street" to be in the same camp as Brexit - harping on about the past. Leave the past where it belongs.

 

[AJB Temple]

There are other aspects to this. Five years ago I ran out of space in the offices I had in London at the time and my team and I started looking around for much larger space. My biggest issue was that I was paying for the lease 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but the financial markets in UK, plus a bit of US and FE trading, meant the office was in very light use from 7am to 9am, busy all day and light from 5pm to 8pm at the latest, and otherwise empty. So empty for the majority of the time (including weekends).

We did a staff consultation about a mix of hot desking / job shares / working at night (fine for processing and IT from a business perspective / working from home for 1 or 2 days a week (problems with supervision made this not suitable for some roles) / shared office arrangements / shifting admin out of town.

We had a 50/50 male /female mix at all levels, and the age pattern was skewed to 20-30 age group. We had a handful of mothers, mostly with young children and mostly in management positions as they were circa 30 years old.

Staff reaction was very divided. None of the younger age group was at all interested in WFH or any flexibility. Reasons varied but the biggest was work was also their social life and escape from the parental clutches (many were forced to live at parental home as London is very expensive). They also saw not being physically in the City as very career detrimental - they need the guidance of colleagues, the sense of belonging to an age group across City firms, and they very much needed a lot of technical supervision, training and guidance in a highly regulated and technical field.

The older staff were far more open minded, and the female older staff fully embraced flexible working, job shares, WFH etc.

My experience is that the dynamics of a business with any kind of scale are much more complex than broad brush solutions suggest. We will have to embrace not only entirely new ways of working, but also training, mentoring, supervising, monitoring, appraising and not least dealing with mental health and well being of employees. The UK hasn't even begun to deal with this yet.

 

[Rorschach]

There are other aspects to this. Five years ago I ran out of space in the offices I had in London at the time and my team and I started looking around for much larger space. My biggest issue was that I was paying for the lease 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but the financial markets in UK, plus a bit of US and FE trading, meant the office was in very light use from 7am to 9am, busy all day and light from 5pm to 8pm at the latest, and otherwise empty. So empty for the majority of the time (including weekends).

We did a staff consultation about a mix of hot desking / job shares / working at night (fine for processing and IT from a business perspective / working from home for 1 or 2 days a week (problems with supervision made this not suitable for some roles) / shared office arrangements / shifting admin out of town.

We had a 50/50 male /female mix at all levels, and the age pattern was skewed to 20-30 age group. We had a handful of mothers, mostly with young children and mostly in management positions as they were circa 30 years old.

Staff reaction was very divided. None of the younger age group was at all interested in WFH or any flexibility. Reasons varied but the biggest was work was also their social life and escape from the parental clutches (many were forced to live at parental home as London is very expensive). They also saw not being physically in the City as very career detrimental - they need the guidance of colleagues, the sense of belonging than age group across City firms, and they very much needed a lot of technical supervision, training and guidance in a highly regulated and technical field.

The older staff were far more open minded, and the female older staff fully embraced flexible working, job shares, WFH etc.

My experience is that the dynamics of a business with any kind of scale are much more complex than broad brush solutions suggest. We will have to embrace not only entirely new ways of working, but also training, mentoring, supervising, monitoring, appraising and not least dealing with mental health and well being of employees. The UK hasn't even begun to deal with this yet.

Very interesting to hear the opinions of the staff there. If only we could do that same straw poll now, I wonder if the reactions would be the same? Possibly among the younger staff there might be even more desire to be in the office?

 

[bp122]

The working from home thing, although new to many, has been going in the I.T sector for a long time.

However, as you say, the effect of this will be felt by the people whose livelihood depended on people going to office. But, only a portion (can't comment on how big or small) are working from home. There are still large pockets of jobs in manufacturing, construction and other industries where at least a majority of the work force still have to go into work until such a time where all those jobs are either replaced by machines or by lack of demand (latter being highly unlikely for the next decade or two)

Also, throughout history, especially recent (last 50 years), this has been fairly dynamic and the people and their jobs have evolved. And the rate of that evolution is has also accelerated in the last 20-30 years where the concept of "start a job and retire at it in return for a watch" has changed to "keep your fingers in as many pies".

So I think, after an adjustment period, they will all evolve.
1. Transport sector will probably focus more on logistical support rather than people transport (online shopping deliveries, food and supermarket deliveries)
2. Sandwich vans may branch out into delivering sandwiches to areas with more homeworking people (who will gladly welcome it as then they wouldn't have to cook!)
3. Coffee shops may partner with sandwich van franchises (we may expect such a thing) or give rise to even scarier concept of "Uber coffee!" Based on a subscription service!
4. Car parks is a tough one to predict, but could be demolished and /or rebuilt as hospitals (because we're going to need it!)

Time will tell.

 

[AJB Temple]

Younger staff very much need the companionship. When they turn up, fresh from university, they need a few formative years to teach them, ground them and set them up. They compete, socialise, form relationships, learn, gain skill and ambition in this way. Humans are not great at being solitary, especially when they are young. However, it is no longer my problem.

 

[billw]

Interesting angle, and certainly relevant in pretty much every career path since you can't learn from the experience of others if you're never with them.

I think the phrase WFH is a bit misleading though because that's mainly due to socialising restrictions at present, in time it would transform into WFL - working from locality.

I suppose the issue is that the ones who want the flexibility are the ones who are needed to mentor the juniors.

 

[Blackswanwood]

There is definitely a range of emotions about wfh. Back in March we quickly moved several thousand employees to wfh - circa 75% of the total.

Some love it and if they never had to come back into an office would be happy. I would say they tend to be people who appreciate losing the commute and it works comfortably for their home life.

Some do it out of necessity. Their domestic situation may not be perfect or they crave the social element of going to work.

The rest which is the majority are on a spectrum in-between but skewed towards preferring wfh of the time.

We try to rotate staff back into the office on a range of a day to four days per fortnight. The number of days is agreed with them individually.

We won’t go back to how it was pre-COVID but will have a flexible model that hopefully gets the best of both worlds.

 

[--Tom--]

This also brings up the question of how remote can you be from the office. Will we see more people moving to the country as they can now work in remote areas and not worry about commutes. Then what about overseas, could you do your job from the south of France? Or what if it just makes offshoring and saving staffing costs that much easier. Will we have a much more global workforce now people don’t need to be in the office.

it has been odd that precovid so many businesses stuck to office hours that didn’t need to. Why could I only get a haircut between 9-5? Why were shops open 9-5? During those times people are working to get money to be able to spend it.....
Online will takeover as now when I finish work at 6 all the shops are shut and I no longer pop out on lunch to quickly buy things. If I could still go to a physical shop I would for things like clothing that you want to be able to see etc

I have seen a reinvigoration of local shops and the parks. They are now full of people going out to get a coffee or sandwich and walking round the park as an escape from the house.

businesses adapt or die

I do feel quite strongly that savings in property by businesses should go to the staff. A percentage of my house is now office space, and my bills have doubled.

if I was earlier in my career and still living in a studio flat with no outside space I’d be desperate to get back into the office, as I am I was in a position to buy myself a comfortable office chair, a desk and reallocate space in the house. Plus in the summer sit in the garden on calls and enjoy the weather.

 

[billw]

This also brings up the question of how remote can you be from the office. Will we see more people moving to the country as they can now work in remote areas and not worry about commutes. Then what about overseas, could you do your job from the south of France? Or what if it just makes offshoring and saving staffing costs that much easier. Will we have a much more global workforce now people don’t need to be in the office.

Problem with that is things like work permits and taxation. Technically if you're employed and working, even remotely, in a foreign country then you would need a work permit and to register with local taxation authorities. That would be a massive pain for most employers. I mean sure you could probably fly under the radar and go live in Hawaii for a couple months, if you get caught though....