News
Home-Working Shift: The Office Future is Going to be Different
A survey of 50 large UK firms has found 86% intend to use home-working in some respect moving forward, as the office culture faces a fundamental home-working shift.
Covid-19 has had a huge effect on the office environment, with most employees told to work from home during various lockdowns over the past year.
But, according to research from the BBC, the majority of those companies questioned have seen benefits to home-working, hybrid working and flexible employment and will seek to use them in future.
"We're never going to go back to working the way we used to work," said Mark Read, chief executive of advertising firm WPP.
“People are working from home three to four days a week so we probably need 20% less space, but we're not going to do that if everyone's working from home on Mondays and Fridays."
The survey, covering companies who have approximately 1.1 million staff combined, has found a healthy willingness to engage in changes to the office environment.
Some have gone even further by actually closing offices in anticipation of this home-working shift; Capita has shut down 49 of its sites, while Lloyds Bank has promised to close 20% of its office space over the next three years.
How can companies ensure a smooth transition?
With that in mind, companies will be eager to ensure productivity and efficiency is maximised when workers are home-based.
Onhealth offers a remote workstation assessment which can ensure optimal working conditions for each and every remote-based employee. The scheme includes:
- A one-to-one appointment with a medical professional, who can provide helpful information and advice on how to improve the home-working set-up
- A detailed report that can be submitted to HR
- A chain of events that can be used as a platform for further improvements
Improve the relationship with your home-working staff, avoid unnecessary aches and pains due to bad posture - as a result of a poor work set-up – and limit the number of sick days as a consequence with our remote workstation assessment.