Could the Office workers 'new normal' due to Covid precautions of working from home become the new reality ( post Covid )
as more and more Employers embrace home working office workers and virtual office structures based on employees
working from home; as well as embracing all the new technology such as Zoom video conferencing, Skype for Business
etc, etc that comes with it.

Of course this would exclude those Office workers who have to have face to face meetings with customers but
the back office staff were already beginning to work from home even before Covid.

Will the millennial generation of Office workers ever have to attend an office ( on a regular basis ) from the time they
leave full time education until the day they retire ?

Will the new generation of Office workers be buying property where they would love or dream to live rather than
a compromise to take account of how far their commuting distance is to get to work ?

Could this be the dawning of The Age of a Place in the Countryside or a Place in the Sun for Office workers ?

BBC Business News - No plan for a return to the office for millions of staff

What will retirement look like for home based office workers in the 21st century ? Would the difference between work
and retirement simply mean they can reclaim that part of the house or apartment that they set aside for
'working from home' can be returned to being part of the home furniture ?

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Surely the time has come for Boris to 'circle the wagons' for a bit of herd immunity ?

no

A move to a more hybrid model is more likely. For one, I certainly hope I can go back to the office 1-2 days a week. the world working from home is one big social experiment which we have no idea of the real outcome of.

I agree. Even if your job does not require working from an office, there is something to be said for F2F interactions, immediate decisions and a social environment.

Our company is taking a very conservative approach to bringing people back, but we have been told that a permanent 'work from home' scenario is not being considered.

For those living in London and the South East it could be a welcome reduction on the size of the car park on the London orbital M25 motorway
during commuter hours as well as being environmentally friendly of course.

i thought i would love to work at home the whole time. i don't have to come to the office at all but find i come more often than not due to:

- change of scenery
- social interaction
- facetime with colleagues
- free coffee
- aircon
- more movement
- reduced energy costs at home
- restaurants give a change from cooking
- time away from the missus!

Or the rise of the 'Out of Office Internet Cafe' for change of scenery, the occasional meeting with manager, colleagues and other business discourse.
Particularly those recommended and frequented by those who are and doing it already called The Digital Nomads !!

I'm a millenial and I've been working regularly on a office since 2004. Meet customers face to face once or twice a month, the rest of time glued to the computer at the office. No need to wonder if millenials will ever attend regularly to an office, we already did it I'm already back in the office and I expect it to be like this for the next 15-20 years until retirement.

After reading the BBC article, I think all those business with no plans of returning to office for millions of staff is corporate speak for we don't know what to do with these employees for the moment, we are reorganizing and lots of them will be moved to new units or dismissed. The virus takes all the headlines but there's a global economic recession.

I may be wrong but if you're not needed in the office, it's rather probable that you're not needed at all in the organization. Programmers don't bite me, you're the exception

And yet those who have become Digital Nomads ( and made a success of it ) are thriving & winning contracts in such a working environment !

Not if you have a CEO like in our company who insisted we all had to come back on April 15 (!!!)

According to the german saying: Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser (trust is ok, to control is better) 😡

Disclosure: I'm fan of the path of less resistance.

You can thrive and succeed at anything you want but lots of times it's a status competition game instead of an efficient thing. Yes, you can live in Thailand while working for a London bank and tell everyone about it, but is it the most simple and efficient thing to do? Do the photos with the smiling locals really reflect a happy moment or the joy comes from sharing the pic on fb/insta? There's only one thing sadder than showing off to an audience around you, showing off to an audience 10K km away from you.

The only digital nomad (not poor) I know is a guy who's a trailing spouse. The main earner is the woman. They're happy with the arrangement and have a comfortable life.....but someone goes to the office every day to pay for the luxury of living with a successful digital nomad

I think hybrid systems are more likely in the future. If big companies can save money by reducing office space AND still get similar production, they will reduce the office space. Some office space is still needed for meetings and occasional working in the office for various reasons. Perhaps it is shared office space for smaller companies and just much less office spaces for larger companies.

At times like these, I am glad I am not in the commercial real estate business. Just think of the decisions that are going to be made as some of these leases start ending in the next few years. Yikes.

WFH was successful - as in, work got done, and done very well - in groups where colleagues knew each other well, knew their clients well, knew how to work with one another.

However, it is now being seen that the recent hires, folks without much office time under their belt pre-lockdown, are struggling. They don't have the necessary relationships, don't have the understanding of the business and the needs of their customers, and don't have an understanding of the company goals and indeed of the company culture needed to be able to get the work done.

How to bring new employees up to speed in a WFH situation presents significant challenge.

This is especially worrying wrt apprenticeship programs where young employees need significant mentoring just to understand what having a job actually means.

Top management is still keen to save on infrastructure costs by shifting to a WFH model. But folks closer to the work are hearing some alarm bells already ringing.

Interesting times.

My organization already decided to allow all employees who can work from home to choose how many days per week they do home-office. No limit.

I, as others suggested, will start going back to the office once or twice per week for meetings and some face-to-face contact. I plan to continue working exclusively from home until there's a vaccine or the entire pandemic is entirely behind us.

I'm afraid most of us millenials are in our 30s now. Think the next generation down.

Haven't worked in an office for more than 10 years! I could never ever do 9 to 5 again.

This. I wrote it here a month into lockdown that it is a way to let people know that they are replaceable by whoever else is online and costs less. Like a continent away..

People are comforted by the idea of less traffic, fewer investments, time saving. They don't see their new expenditures and the fact we live in a very expensive place which will happily outsource.

Digital nomad is an old concept, has been around for a while.

On the other hand - I feel that things will get back somewhat to the old normal slowly, maybe with vaccines, or other measures but homeoffice cannot replace the effectiveness of a real human communal effort. Studies found out home office during covid exhausted employees, most of them worked too much. As if the Western work culture hasn't had enough problems with separating one's professional and personal life, identity and space.

I know my job can work either way but prefer the job sanctuary to play the role well..quite festive and special really.

So I hope it was just temporary and human office life will restart. Those rituals are quite a part of our identity I think. Create other jobs, too.

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"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

If you're a Java developer, maybe, but many in IT are tied to working within Switzerland because of Swiss Data Privacy laws. I would bloody love to be living in Greece with my partner still earning his Swiss wage, but the law doesn't allow for this.

My company did not have enough desks for 100% occupancy anyway.
If they reduce more on the premise of 60% work from home, it will be a sh1tstorm because no one will want to go in on a Monday or Friday, but they will be the days of least occupancy.

I've swung in the past 10 years between working 1, 2 or 3 days in the office.

My present employer, until the COVID-19 situation, was rather traditional and I postured myself for 3 days in the office, 2 working from home. The mindset is well and truly shattered for the employer now and they see a) it works and b) they can save costs. So things are changing.

It really doesn't matter where I am as long as I have connectivity. I don't have access to CID/PII that is limited to a certain domicile.

I don't even have a work laptop. I switched to virtualised and use my far sexier non-corporate devices to get things done.

Welcome, finally, to the 21st century for many.