With so many of us working from home, and even at Level 3 we’re being encouraged to continue to do so,  it’ll be interesting to see how everyone adapts back to office life.

Traffic, I imagine will be a major. Having to commute and sit in heavy traffic to get to and from work, will be a stark change to being able to roll out of bed and along to your kitchen table in your PJ’s.

I’m sure there are many Zoom-weary workers out there who’re sick and tired of being pinned to the laptop for meetings beamed into everyone’s living rooms with extreme close ups of people’s faces.

Many probably can’t wait to get back to the hustle and bustle of casual chat around the office, being able to use an industrial size printer, and conducting meetings face to face around a big shared table again.

Andrew Barnes, the Perpetual Guardian founder who pioneered the 4 day week here for his company, says that businesses may well reconsider what form the workplace takes after this.

Obviously it all comes down to how productive home based working is, but for many, it may actually have been more productive.

He cites among the benefits, less travel time to and fro, less stress around commuting and the impact that stress has on work life.

He thinks employees could be ‘fresher’ working from home.. and less time poor.

He says open plan offices have too many distractions.. ‘statistically a disruption occurs every 11 minutes, with employees taking 20 or more minutes to get back to full productivity’.

But ask anyone working from home right now..  juggling kids, pets, partners, and a long list of jobs hovering in the background, like a full washing basket or a dishwasher that needs emptying, and they’ll tell you that working at the office is actually easier.

It’s a boundaries thing. Work and home have their own individual structure.

But Barnes argues flexible working is more beneficial to long term company performance.  

Not only that, he sees a potential post-Covid future of smaller workplaces, with more space allocated to meeting rooms and social areas, and more hot desks. He thinks workplaces could become places employees come to once a week for meetings.

If he’s right, it changes everything we know about traditional office buildings and infrastructure.

Everything we know about city design and development could change.

If it changes time spent in traffic and the housing market being about proximity to town.. then maybe it’s no bad thing.