COMMENT It’s been a long time coming and something that businesses up and down the country have been praying for over the past 12 months or so. And now we have it: light at the end of the tunnel. Through the haze, we have a roadmap which aims for “a return to some sort of normality” (to coin a phrase). For many of us, we are now at a stage where we will only believe it when we see it, but at least we have a plan.
Could the roadmap really mean a return to the office and a return to a more collaborative work environment that is no longer at the mercy of never-ending Zoom or Microsoft Teams calls? I don’t think anyone believes that this will be the end of remote working. Video calls are here to stay. However, we are slowly but surely moving towards a more hybrid way of working, taking the best of both worlds, breaking up the week and allowing again for spontaneous creativity and the development of important working relationships with colleagues and clients alike.
At the start of the pandemic, practically overnight, businesses no longer had the luxury of weighing up whether remote working was something that they “could” offer at some point – they either had to adapt to a more remote workforce or shut their doors for good. Many businesses have been successful with the new model and don’t want it to end.
Work-life balance
Agile working is the future, whereby teams can work within guidelines of the task but without boundaries of how they achieve it. Companies such as BT, Google and Unilever have already adopted agile ways of working and many more will follow suit, including us at Lee Baron. We want to offer our dedicated staff the much-desired flexibility to balance between remote working and having a central hub to make the most of having of working within a team.
Thanks to the power of technology, many firms have noticed that their productivity has not been adversely affected. Furthermore, it appears that once things settled down and companies and their staff adapted to new circumstances, remote working has been seen to help foster a better work-life balance, as well as being cheaper for both employer and employee. So whatever mixture of agile working that companies choose to adopt, it is here to stay. Models will vary, including for those companies that work entirely remotely, those where employees attend HQ two out of five days a week or those who find themselves in local hubs.
At the same time, around 40% of UK office workers are worried about catching Covid-19 from their colleagues by returning to the workplace, according to the Supporting Your Remote Workforce in 2021 and Beyond report. The major concerns about returning to the office revolve around whether companies have put in place adequate measures to limit the spread of Covid. This is understandable given that we have been hibernating for the past year, avoiding as much physical contact as possible.
Setting an example
Property managers can guide businesses towards a realistic way of working and set them up to succeed in this new world. They must work with health & safety, HR and senior leadership teams to ensure that offices are well-equipped and give employees the confidence of knowing that they are safe in their offices.
As city centres gradually reopen with Boris Johnson’s roadmap in full swing, they will adapt, reinvent where necessary and rebound in due course.
In the same way that real estate has swiftly adapted to this situation in the rejuvenation of the suburbs, it will progressively support the rebound of city centres over the coming months.
Real estate’s ability to adapt and evolve in the long run is well documented and as property managers we are in a unique position to lead this post-Covid-19 process of change. Over the coming months, we have a responsibility to set an example by embracing new ways of thinking and to finding creative and innovative solutions to the issues – big and small – that face us all.
Carl Whayman is chief executive of Lee Baron
