This is a difficult time for the world with lock down in many countries. The economy has been hit badly but the pandemic has shown many of us that there exist ways of working other than the ‘normal’ office work that we have been used to, basically Remote Working or Working from Home.

The technology for Remote Working has existed for a long time but for fear of losing control and potential breach of security, organisations have been resisting the change to remote working. However, in order to deal with the lock down due to COVID-19 pandemic, public and private organisations have got their staff to ‘work from home’ and the systems being setup to enable this to happen will remain in place even after the lock down is over. When the economy gets back to normal, some organisations will realise that they can expand their work force without increasing their office space. It is possible that the lessons learnt by employers and employees in this short period will mean a big step in the evolution of the Office of the Future.

There are a few global trends that one needs to look at carefully. With the success of technological development, physical and digital robots have displaced human labour in industrial production and in white collar office work. Gains in human productivity have it possible for each person to work for less time than the standard 5×8 hours per week or simply fewer persons to complete the job. Large corporations choose the former and not the latter. The office jobs are concentrated in commercial developments in large cities, with traffic jams and long commutes.

The deployment of Cloud Technology is a major enabler for people working from home in the lock down. Several new fields of work like digital marketing, telemarketing and free-lance professional work were using remote working from homes and coffee shops even before the lock down. Co-working spaces with shared facilities, offered them an ideal arrangement for remote working.

But public and private organisations are reluctant to use remote working because of security issues of all kinds. Commercial organisations fear loss of control over staff and loss of productivity. Government agencies fear loss of security. Banks and financial institutions are concerned about cyber-crime. Potential loss of intellectual property is a worry for many organisations. In spite of all these difficulties, COVID-19 outbreak has forced organisations to set aside some of their fears and allow to staff to work from home. When the lock down is over, organisations can look back see how they overcame the fears of insecurity and employees can look back to see what they gained or lost in Work from Home.

One thing that has become clear to many is that the home is hardly a suitable place for working from, especially if there is no space available for office work and if more than one person is trying to Work from Home. However, Work from Home means zero commuting time, flexible working hours and even the possibility of part time work sometimes.  

It is my belief that having established the possibility of remote working, it is open to us to see if this can become the standard way of working for most office jobs. The Office of the Future would make it possible for people to walk or cycle to work, be able to get out of the house, socialise and use common office facilities like proper workstations, meeting rooms, conference rooms, cafeteria etc. and services like printing, video conferencing, secretaries, concierge and security. With zero commutes, there would be tremendous environmental benefits of this arrangement. The original Co-working Spaces were meant to do just this but they ended up in commercial areas away from homes, convenient for the employers but not the employees. When the dust settles down over COVID-19, Co-working spaces of a different kind have the potential for becoming the decentralised Office of the Future – a place for Remote Working. They would probably save establishment expenses for organisations but more importantly they would save commuting time and costs for employees. This would be a win-win situation for both employers and employees.

COVID-19 lock down has demonstrated the power and potential of remote working and it has paved the way for a gradual transition to remote working systems. The existing offices will remain but more commercial spaces will probably not be built any time soon. Mega commercial space projects in the making, such as London’s tallest tower and New Delhi’s huge government complex, will be hit by the aftermath of Corona Virus outbreak. A rethink on these projects will hopefully point the way to the decentralised Office of the Future.