If you could work from home forever, would you?

Yes. Yes, I would. 100%

Comfy clothes, no make-up, no distractions (except for the hubby and two naughty Shihtzus), an extra hour sleep, not sat in traffic for an hour and a half, no road rage…

We’re all adapting to life in the presence of this global pandemic. For a lot of us who have moved into the realm of remote working, we’re beginning to forget what working from the office was like!

When lockdown began, some companies who didn’t allow employees to work from home previously were dubious and almost reluctant to action a fully remote workforce, with old fashioned concerns that ‘people who work from home don’t do as much as those in the office’. Now we’re 8 weeks in, a large proportion of CEOs with those concerns are seeing the benefits and coming to the realisation that working rigidly from an office may not always be the answer to drive their success as a business.

Even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced this week that employees could work from home…FOREVER (if they want to). Journalist John Brandon discussed this update in a recent article for Forbes, where he had some concerns.

“I’ve worked at home for almost 19 years. I enjoy being around my family, but the truth is I don’t see them for hours on end. I’m a solo act, talking to animated pixels on a screen. Remote work is lonely and tedious, a repeating pattern of monotony.

You can’t read body language, pick up on an exasperated sigh when someone is muted, or sense a co-workers presence. Zoom is fine for the transmission of information, but it can’t compare to an in-person brainstorming session with a series of light-bulb moments going pop-pop-pop around the room. Or when we collectively agree on something. Or when we see a funny scene down on a street corner. Or when we laugh because the boss just spilled her coffee in the other room. Meaning, it can’t replace those moments when we are just being human.”

Could eliminating the office completely also eliminate the culture that many organisations will have worked so hard to create and used to their advantage to successfully attract and retain the best talent? A question I ask myself. Can we keep working from home forever? I love it. But do our team?

We’d love to get your thoughts!

How are you adapting to managing a distributed workforce? Should permanent remote working opportunities be something all businesses offer?