What now for hybrid working?

Social change can be gradual and predictable.  Or it can be disruptive and sudden. The technology to allow work to be done remotely from the office has existed for many years; it was only the Covid lockdowns that demonstrated to employees and employers alike that it was feasible.

Four years on and remote office working has become standard practice at least for part of the week.  The latest ONS data show almost 15% of people working exclusively from home and around 25% working some of the week from home.  The benefits have been well rehearsed: greater flexibility and autonomy, fewer commuting hours, stimulus to local businesses, less office space required and so on.  The effects on productivity remain disputed.

But are we at a new inflection point?  The US President is calling government workers back into the office; Amazon, Boots, JP Morgan are among companies requiring full time return to the office; others, like WPP, are in the process of requiring 4 days in the office.  Lord Stuart Rose (former head of Asda, M&S and retail guru) has gone so far as blaming home working for a general decline in the UK economy.  The BBC has reported that the number of golf games played during the working week has risen by 350%!

The mental and physical health issues seem rather divided.  For some the relief of not having to travel and not attend an office helps them to cope with the working week.  For others the lack of company leads to loneliness and isolation.

For what it’s worth we think that the hybrid working genie is permanently out of the bottle; it is very hard to imagine scenarios in which everyone is expected to be in the office every day.  But then again, hybrid was hard to imagine before the lockdowns.

What does all this mean for co-working spaces away from the big city centres?  We believe we will continue to have a role to play in the ‘new’ hybrid working world.  We provide flexibility, we reduce the need for commuting, we provide professional working environments, we offer the company of similar individuals.  We will remain a key part of the matrix of working opportunities that will be perfect for some, occasionally convenient for many and irrelevant to others.  

But then we would say that, wouldn’t we?