Will we need physical offices after the COVID-19 pandemic?

The whole world is now experiencing the drastic changes caused by the COVID-19 lockdown. The required social distancing has already divided the usual daily and business life into before and after the quarantine era. The new rules are set to be followed, and one of them is called ‘remote work.

Today’s remote work experiment is a mandatory requirement of quarantine measures, but what will we expect when quarantine ends? Will the world of business return to its usual 9-to-5 office-based schedule or accept remote work as a regular thing, and there will be no need for offices?

Let’s first discover what benefits remote work provides to employees and businesses and, based on that, analyze how this tendency will develop in the future.

Costs are Saved!

The work-from-home approach for businesses means that there is no need to rent an office and set it up with modern equipment, furniture, and other cost expenses to provide employees with the workplace. Now, their home is their office, and they can set it up to their preferences.

In this way, businesses can save thousands of dollars each month and spend them on more beneficial investments for the company, including motivational packages for employees.

More freedom = more productivity

Remote work saves time and money on traveling to an office, which allows employees to allocate this time to doing physical exercises and getting more sleep. With a flexible life and work schedule, they feel less stressed but have more energy during the day.

Beyond personal well-being, remote employees claim to become more productive and less distracted by workplace chatter and focus on more tasks at hand.

According to the Citrix-One-Poll report, 69% of global employees increased their productivity while working from home.

Work hard for people, and they will work for you harder.

Work & Life Balance is now in Balance

Work & Life balance is said to be one of the core company’s corporate values. A flexible schedule is considered by 40% of employees as the most advantageous benefit provided by remote working.

On average, it takes 1 hour for an employee to get to the office and return home. Here let’s apply some mathematics:

that is

5 hours per week, 20 hours per month, 240 hours per year,

1200 hours per 5 years

=

50 days per 5 years an average person spends just on the way to the workplace and back, and

remote work, in contrast, requires only switching a laptop on.

As a result, employees are becoming happier, so is business, generally experiencing 25% less employee turnover.

Forecasts for the Future — What is Next?

The last 5 years have already proven the benefits of working from home, increasing the number of remote employees by 43%, and the 2020s are rapidly bringing these statistics to a new level.

60% of US permanent office employees have started to work remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and 59% of them admit their preference to continue to work remotely even after the end of a quarantine — 82% of employees would like to have 1 day of remote work per working week, while 57% — 3 days.

The demand always runs the market, and the labor market is not an exception. Businesses that want to have the most professional and experienced team members will have to continue to adopt remote work as their basis.

By 2028, 73% of all businesses will be fully or partially leading the remote working approach.

It’s undoubtedly impossible to give a precise answer to the question, ‘will we need the physical offices after the COVID-19 pandemic ends? — there will always be professions not applicable for home performance, requiring additional equipment, etc.

But in any way, this difficult and challenging time has shown the whole world various opportunities and benefits remote work provides to employees and businesses.

We all can see that flexibility works for both sides, so why not continue that? At Workee, we believe that comfortable office equipment and efficient digital tools could easily exchange traditional offices in the nearest future. That’s why we created our platform with the goal of enabling personal digital offices at home for everyone. Сheck more to get ideas on how to work from home efficiently and seamlessly with the personal digital office we are working on.