For almost as long as I can remember in the computer business, certainly since the invention of the personal computer, the future of office work was going to be distributed to people's homes. "Telecommuting" was what we called it then, but it really did not take off in any big way. A rare exception was Steve Shirley's F.I. Group which basically employed women working from home, largely those who were professionally qualified but who had taken a break to start a family. That would probably not have taken off but for two factors: the high skills of its members and the tenacity and drive of the founder. In the case of humdrum office work, too many managers had a need for the comfort of warm bodies around them. It was too easy to drip feed instructions and/or change ones mind knowing that your staff were instantly accessible, nine to five. No need to work out a coherent and detailed plan of work.
The pandemic has given many a rude awakening. The skills necessary to run a distributed office have had to be acquired. And now a new opinion survey commissioned by the i newspaper shows that "a third of millennials will look for a new job if their employer insists they return to office working full time". What economic logic has failed to achieve, a coronavirus has done the trick, probably helped by the Green revolution pounding out the message that personal travel adds to carbon equivalent emissions.
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