For more than a few years, the idea of working from home was seen as a neat idea with some questions over viability. Businesses were intrigued by the concept, but in an arena which by its nature needs to be somewhat risk-averse, being the first business to jump was always going to be a potential banana skin. Even with the suggestion that it could aid productivity, few businesses would “bet the farm” on something that had never been tested on a wide scale. And then the pandemic happened.
There is a history of harrowing global events leading to broader positive developments; without the science used to develop rockets for use in war, humankind would never have landed on the moon, as an example. So with businesses forced to embrace the idea of working from home – because the alternative was mass transmission worse than anything we’ve seen in the last year – the positive discoveries have followed, some less predictably than others. As a few examples, let’s look at the following.
Fewer people commuting means cleaner air
It’s unsurprising that the environment has seen benefits from people staying home. The less our highways are clogged up with people trying to get to the office, the lower the level of emissions clouding our atmosphere. It’s something that was rarely mentioned as a positive outcome of working from home pre-pandemic, but it is something we should reckon with going forward. Given the lop-sided responsibility businesses have for greenhouse gas emissions, embracing this part of the new normal could be a way of putting it right.
Modifications can be made fuss-free
If you have been working from home for most of 2020, then you have surely appreciated the little benefits like the ability to sleep in a little in the morning or pop to the kitchen for a snack. Not being in an office has also been a real boon for people who have specific health needs. Even if the business needs to fund the original purpose, installing an ergonomic sit to stand desk at a colleague’s workstation has become more straightforward. Expecting those colleagues to fit into a workspace that wasn’t designed with them in mind helped no-one, and working from home has helped us see that.
Potential savings in the business budget
The specter of offices lying open and unused has been a concerning thought throughout this pandemic, but for any business that leases its premises there is a potential bright side to this. Naturally, the ground rent on an office or call center that holds dozens of people will be higher than that for one which need only hold five or fewer. Businesses that might have been resistant about adopting a work-from-home culture are beginning to think differently thanks to the potential savings this represents. This alone might be one of the deciding factors in how widely the concept is retained once we’re through the pandemic
Working from home may have been forced upon many of us, but as the benefits above and beyond productivity become clear, it will be interesting to see how widely it is retained.
