Want to set up a home office?
You’re by no means alone.
In the US in 2019, people working from home accounted for 7% of the civilian workforce, some 10 million people – up from just 5.2% in 2017.
Other developed countries report a similar leap. In the UK, the ten years between 2008 and 2018 saw a 74% leap in home working, with over 1.5 million people regularly working from their home offices.
In Australia, by 2016, 30% of the entire workforce earned their living mostly or entirely from their home office.
And all of that was before Covid-19.
While there may well be a backlash and a restoration to previous norms, the virus seems likely to have made two fundamental changes to office working patterns.
On the one hand, it has proved to many companies what’s possible without a central office hub – much office-based work depends on getting only a handful of elements right.
And on the other hand, it has turned on a lightbulb above many companies’ heads. Do they absolutely, positively need an expensive piece of corporate real estate? Do they need to pay ground rents, insurance premiums, power bills? Do they need to staff lunchrooms, hire janitors or buy enormous quantities of office equipment?
Historians tell us that the Black Death was both a global catastrophe and a force for social change, because in its wake, workers were able to demand better pay and conditions, because there were fewer workers around.
Covid is unlikely to become so cataclysmic a plague, and it may not change the economic structure of the whole world.
But one thing is certain. Most office cultures that were reluctant to allow their workers to have home offices before the Covid crisis have had proof handed to them of just how much can be done from home, while keeping office workers safe from the risk of infection.
Putting that genie back in its bottle may be a thing that neither workers nor companies are in any hurry to do.
But let’s get real for a minute. The people who worked from home during the Covid pandemic’s first wave weren’t doing it as it would ideally be done. They were working from bedrooms. From spare rooms. From living rooms and dining tables. They were doing it as a stop-gap, rather than as a long-term working solution
What’s the difference?
Planning. Thought. Long-term physical safety.
If you, like the millions before you, are going to set up a home office from which you intend to work indefinitely, no couch or kitchen table is going to cut it.
If you’re going to do it – let’s do it right. CLICK HERE to see side.
