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Out of office: How coronavirus has changed our working lives forever

Bigger homes, video skills and rethinking the clock: coronavirus could change our working lives forever, writes Niamh Horan

Coronavirus Ireland: Some people now take it as a ‘‘given’’ that the end of the office is nigh

Photo: Joe Giddens/PA Wire

Coronavirus Ireland: Some people now take it as a ‘‘given’’ that the end of the office is nigh

Photo: Joe Giddens/PA Wire

Niamh Horan Twitter Email

April 13 2020 07:26 AM

As the Covid-19 pandemic initially took hold, a cartoon from the The New Yorker summed up the new way of working. In it, a man sits at his laptop: “My God, those meetings really COULD have all been emails,” he gasps.

Four weeks in, and the latest sketch paints a very different picture. A man stands in front of a closet and sees his wife hiding behind their clothes: “Dinner is ready if you want to take a break from your personal space.”

For everything written in between, nothing captures the joy and pain of remote working quite so succinctly.

The benefits of video conferencing in slippers, zero commute time, home-cooked lunches and flexi-hours are being weighed each day against the frustration of sleeping and working cheek-to-jowl with a spouse, an inability to unplug, social isolation and the loss of that elusive creative spark which ignites in face-to-face meetings. And yet some people now take it as a ‘‘given’’ that the end of the office is nigh.

Before you get settled in, it might be worth taking a look back at history to get a more realistic view of what’s to come. When computers first went mainstream in the 1970s and 1980s, it was said ‘‘home’’ would become central to work; in the 1990s, with the birth of the internet, email and 24-hour connectivity, again it seemed office life was over. And still remote working never fully caught on.

Why? If anyone was to take it up, surely it would have been the tech giants themselves? Perhaps Steve Jobs, a visionary in the digital era, holds the key to understanding.

The Apple co-founder knew workplace culture was crucial to a company’s success and so insisted on designing the Apple and Pixar offices himself. His dream office would encourage social interaction at every turn.

As the then Pixar president Ed Catmull explained: “Steve was a big believer in the power of accidental mingling; he knew that creativity was not a solitary endeavour.”

Job’s atrium got people out of their office and into the centre spine. To get to where they wanted to go, they would have to cross it many times a day. He even asked that only one set of bathrooms be available to the entire company, to enforce even more interaction, until management stepped in.

A walk through the big tech headquarters in Dublin today — with their free food, on-site gyms and swings — shows how his understanding of the importance of social interaction remains a cornerstone in their philosophy.

Corporations know employees who work permanently alone at home are far more likely to jump ship when a better offer comes along. A team that makes friends, socialises and is more emotionally invested is more likely to devote years to their company and give their best while there.

So with predictions of empty glass boxes over-estimated, where does that leave us? Undoubtedly there will still be a seismic shift in behaviour.

Named one of the world’s top five trend-spotters by Forbes magazine, Marian Salzman predicted the clean-eating craze, the rise of the snowflake generation and metrosexual men. With no crystal ball into future behaviour, Salzman is as close as you might get.

And she says we need to get ready to set our watches to ‘‘Quarantine Standard Time’’. With more flexi-time and remote work days, Marian predicts we will “rethink the clock” — “It’s not ‘9am-6pm’ any more” when you have more leeway to plan your productivity and “when you haven’t a commute it will also be easier to give companies more hours”.

When people do go to the office, she says: “They are not going to return to what we used to do. We will still go to the office, but for socialising and group meetings.” Once there, she says “conference room tables will have seats six feet apart. The days of being squeezed in are over.”

Her theory fits with one of Ireland’s leading property experts, Aidan Gavin: “When I started 20 years ago the space required per person was

11-12sqm, this has dropped today to 6-7 sqm. Companies will rethink this in light of the pandemic, as people insist on more space and a better quality environment.” He says office specification will also have to adapt to counter future events. “Higher quality filtration systems, sensor technology and voice activation will become the norm. Monitoring systems will improve, perhaps even to a level where workers’ temperatures are monitored.”

Marian says “unnecessary business travel” and flight hops are out. “We are going to have to learn how to put the energy back into video meetings. Little boxes on a screen are equalising, so good ideas that mightn’t have been heard will come out, but bosses will need to learn how to assert authority when necessary in a video-mediated environment.”

As for our homes, Marian says: “People are going to move away from big cities and choose to live where there is green grass and access to the city a few days a week. We are also going to look for our homes to be bigger.” In some cities, she says, glass skyscrapers will become condos.

So will we no longer be Europe’s tech-hub? Marian says Ireland is unique: “I’d be worried about cities like Milan that are densely populated and English is not the primary language, but there are three reasons so many companies are headquartered in Ireland: a talented local workforce, tax advantages and proximity. It is a gateway between two continents. That’s not going to change.”

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