So, bear with me this will be a bit of a thread….

1/n

There’s a lot of chatter about ‘working from home’ Vs working from the (an?) office and if the current changes will last post COVID19. My sense is that they will, and won’t. Let me try to explain….

2/n

COVID19 has clearly just accelerated a generational shift in how people work. Already people far younger than me and newer to the work force than I am (and indeed my generation too) were starting to question what is really important in their lives. 3/n

You only have to see the success of an initiative like @freshwalks to see that ways of working have changed significantly over the last few years. People value their own time/spce etc…

4/n

So…chuck in pretty much every home having decent(ish, I live in Glossop) WiFi/4G, tools that mean physical presence isn’t as important (Zoom, Slack, Teams et al) and then in an enforced lockdown where you have to ‘make do’ it is relatively easy to carry on…..BUT…. 5/n

One thing is clear is that the delinification between home & work has become blurred for many. I, myself, have found it hard to be in the same four walls & have craved ‘getting out’, fortunately living in the big G & having a reasonable summer this has been achievable for me 6/n

I suspect that over time people will come to value their time working (physically) with others, they will crave that social element. I know it will be very different when the house is empty and everyone is back at school/work. 7/n

BUT who will want to (consistently) pay a fortune, to sit in a germ tube, to lose maybe two hours of their day, EVERY day? That is the big question. Not many, I will wager. So…my conclusions are thus…. 8/n

The suburbs/‘commuter/market towns’ will suddenly come to life. Co-working spaces in these settings will flourish and economies of their own will sprout up. Restaurants that were unviable due to a lack of lunch time trade could thrive, local supply chains at the fore. 9/n

So I *do* think people will go back to the office as they will crave human interaction but my money would be on a select few big cities with ‘social’/part time space, local hubs for more ‘full-time’ working and office space in large cities being repurposed 10/n

As affordable housing. Only then will we start to see a resurgence in cities, and a balancing of work and life. Difficult to get out in a series of tweets but broadly the TLDR is next 11/n

TLDR; Yes, the shift *to* ‘WFH’ is permanent but I think of it more as eventually becoming WFN(earertomy)H.

And that, IMO isn’t a bad thing at all - communities thrive, less traffic then before, better for the environment, better WLB.

12/12 ENDS.

Oh and as an addendum I think the changes I have mentioned will take half a generation - maybe ten years - to get to some sort of ‘new normal’. Until then we’ll be somewhere in between. The government shouting at clouds isn’t really going to change things, is it?

13/12.