An expert reveals what our offices might look like post-lockdown
Waking up and heading to the office everyday, making coffee while catching up on the weekend with colleagues and nipping out for a sandwich at lunchtime, all feel like a distant memory.
For many of us, it will be a while before we make it back to the office at all. And, even when we do, it's unlikely that it will be the same office on our return, given social distancing guidelines and changing government advice.
However, with lockdown easing, its inevitable that we are starting to ask questions about what our work spaces will look like in the future, and whether we will see a more longterm shift to working from home.
Kathryn Bishop, from renowned future trends consultancy The Future Laboratory, has shared her predictions on the future of the office on the latest episode of the Working from Home with Stylist podcast.
The trends expert discussed what might happen to the physical office, our ways of working and work/life balance.
'We might start to find what we describe as rotational offices start to emerge,' Bishop says. 'This could almost be a riff on what we’ve seen in co-working spaces: there’s more of a casual office working space, maybe [rather] than having one solid permanent office space that your company uses. Even these buildings aren’t pandemic-proof anymore, they’re not fit for purpose, so we’re going to have architects really starting to think actually about the design of the office.'
She continues: 'There’s also this need for greater flexibility. What we’ve found with people working from home, we’ve got used to having our own routines in a way, but we’re still looking towards our employers to give us guidance around what these routines need to be.'
Explaining how this will all affect our work/life balance, Bishop adds: 'The idea of ‘flexibility’ will absolutely underpin everything. Covid-19 has given women the opportunity to think about their own rhythm, it’s raised the level of attention to our own personal health, it’s reframed our working days.
'A lot of people are tapping into their circadian rhythms thinking "hey I think I actually work really great between 6-9pm so actually I’m going to start my day later". The employers themselves are going to have to start thinking about the greater flexibility that we’re going to need.'
But it's not only our offices which will have to adapt — and quickly — it's likely we will also have to make changes to our home in order to better accommodate remote working.
Many predictions suggest that lots of offices will continue to ask employees to work from home on a more long-term basis, with less days in the office, and so we might see a surge in people installing 'isolation rooms' and 'sound-proof offices' at home to ensure continued productivity.
Until we know more, we'll continue to navigate the highs and lows of working from our kitchen table and only seeing our colleagues on Zoom calls.
Listen to Stylist's podcast with Kathryn Bishop here.
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