The office was once a place where people spent nearly a third of their time in, but as millions of UK workers have transitioned to remote working positions, companies may be inclined to adopt this arrangement permanently.
“Unfortunately, we might get misty-eyed about it but I think the office in the form it used to be is probably now a thing of the past,” said Bruce Daisley, author of The Joy of Work. “I was chatting to someone who works at a major media outlet last week, and he said we used to have 1,400 people coming into this office every day. For the last eight weeks we’ve had 30 people and the product hasn’t changed.”
Still, some analysts believe that while there may be a decrease in office usage on the horizon, office working will not be gone for good. One of those reasons is that those who work from home seem to have less promotion opportunities, and with a recession approaching, people will want to set themselves apart from their colleagues.
Professor André Spicer of City University’s Cass Business School said that some companies may opt to keep hubs open that allow workers to come in if they want, while still offering work-from-home arrangements, similar to what Twitter is doing at the moment.
Still, many companies have found that remote working policies greatly reduce their costs which is a big factor in adopting these arrangements.
