Seems the WFH experience is going sour…
One of the key Covid trends finally seems to be turning. Is this going to create a pivot in commercial property markets?
I’m talking about work-from-home (WFH). Zoom calls and working at your kitchen table became the new normal.
And when Covid dropped into the rear-view mirror, workers were slow to return to the office. They liked the autonomy it gave them. They liked getting their time back from commuting.
But it seems the WFH experience might be souring.
A survey by software firm Ivanti shows that just under 40 per cent of office workers now say they are struggling with the downsides of working remotely,
The thing people miss? The people. Not spending time with co-workers is cited as the biggest drawback.
And for some – one in 10 blame – the isolation of WFH is contributing to mental health problems.
Dissatisfaction with working from home was highest in the tech sector – an isolated field of work as it is.
Sixty per cent of tech workers said they were not enjoying working remotely, and almost three-quarters said their workloads had increased as a result of not being in the office.
Ouch.
The bosses aren’t loving it all that much either.
Amazon employees are back in the office at least three days a week now. CEO Andy Jassy said it’s necessary to drive innovation.
“Invention is often sloppy. It wanders and meanders and marinates,” Mr Jassy wrote. “Serendipitous interactions help it, and there are more of those in-person than virtually.”
Virtual employees are also harder to train.
The accounting firms PwC and Deloitte in Britain are giving extra training to younger staff after finding that those who spent large chunks of time in isolation during COVID-19 struggled with speaking during meetings and working in teams.
So if workers are souring on it, and the bosses aren’t loving it, how long is it going to last.
We’re already seeing the tide turning.
LinkedIn reckon that the number of remote jobs advertised on LinkedIn fell for the eleventh straight month in March.
Just one in 10 openings now offers the option of fully remote work, compared with almost one in six a year ago.
We’re still seeing a lot of hybrid work arrangements, but I wonder if that will steadily get pulled back – from 2 days WFH a week, to one day, to one day a fortnight…
WFH doesn’t offer a whole lot to bosses, unless they can scale down their office footprint and save money.
If they can’t, you may as well have people in the office.
And if workers aren’t going to fight them on it, what’s going to stand in its way.
My sense is that this could move very quickly.
And the commercial office market, which has been really struggling, might catch a lift.
But we’re in unchartered territory here. WFH was a massive societal shift.
Who knows how it plays out from here.
JG.