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Originally Posted by trueviking
I’ve been thinking the exact opposite. This is showing me how brutal and unproductive it is to work at home. It might show all those companies thinking about saving money on office space that’s it’s not such a good idea.
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Yeah I think there's going to be two big key learnings from this that are kind of opposites, but play out in different ways:
1) Companies who have been reluctant to modernize and allow flexible work options or more leniency in taking a WFH day here and there will start. Like if someone is just having a bad day and wants to WFH for a day, we'll start to see that being allowed more often. Startups and more progressive offices have been doing this for a while, and these days proves for most businesses it's not that bad – better off letting someone take a "mental health day" from home and still work then other possible outcomes.
2) Businesses will realize how crucial in-person time is. There are some jobs or tasks that are just infinitely harder when your team is working remotely. Workshops, brainstorms, creativity etc. are really hard to have effectively when you're not in the same room with people. Lacks energy.
At first I thought we might see some offices downsize and go to a "hotdesk" system where they can have less desks overall, and shared ones, because people are WFH more – but I think any practices that are increasing germs spread are going to be out the window now. It will be interesting to see how shared spaces in the workforce change going forward.
There's definitely going to be a distinguishable "pre-COVID" and post-COVID line where some things will never be as they were before.