Net Work Alan Winstanley This month, Net Work asks what the longterm effect of lockdown and technology will have on where we work; we look at legacy memory devices; and round up the latest exciting space news.
S
ome twenty years ago the
idea of ‘hot desking’ started to emerge, first seen by the author when he visited a new innovation centre that the local authorities opened in the early 2000s. This new service for business tenants evolved from the provision of accommodation addresses, where for £50 a month small businesses or home start-ups could add a credibility-boosting bricksand-mortar frontage to their enterprise and get mail sent to a ‘virtual office’ located in a smart business centre. Offering their clients some flexible desk space was a logical next step, and some central office services (and coffee) were also included. Everyone was happy: ‘on the go’ business workers could drop in when needed to access office resources, without needing to rent an actual office, and the business centre gained more trade. Hot desking is a form of time-shared office space for workers, providing them with a desk (any that’s available at the time) to perch and power up a laptop, meet and greet visitors and colleagues, print things off, grab a drink or use the network. It might suit small businesses or regional sales staff working ‘on the hoof’, but some trendy companies are adopting hot-desking as the ‘norm’ for their in-house work ethic too. In my view, it deprives staff and co-workers of the stability and familiarity of having their own regular workspace,
even if it’s just a cubicle that can be personalised with family photos. On top of that, the lack of routine face-toface human interaction with colleagues can impact efficiency as well.
Peak Zoom? We have rapidly become used to dealing with all manner of sales and customer advisors in the surreal two-dimensional world of online video chat, even ‘talking’ to cartoon-like avatars powered by AI because proper, costly humans aren’t available. All of this is accepted as totally normal by a modern generation that has never known life without the Internet. There are some signs, though, of ‘Zoom fatigue’ setting in, with Zoom video conference traffic falling in New Zealand by 76% in February compared to roughly a year ago, reports the Telegraph. The Covid-19 lockdown spurred the move towards staff WFH (working from home – theirs), with colleagues and get-togethers now just a webcam or email away. It can be disruptive and intrusive for households, but many staff were trapped into WFH and it was better than closing down an office or going out of business altogether. Other staff have taken to WFH and don’t want to go back: banking giant HSBC is reportedly looking at switching 70% of its 1,800 UK call centre staff to permanently working from home after they volunteered to move out of the office,
Workers share space in the Spaces Ealing Aurora office rental agency in London (Image: Spaces/ IWG) 12
but 25% want to remain office-based, according to a Reuters report.
WFH legalities Working from home raises some other considerations for employees: what happens if the company laptop or PC gets stolen from home or damaged by the kids? Will household insurance policies cover it? Do policies even cover working from home to begin with? These questions were highlighted when the family solicitor visited the author recently: she too is working from home as the main office is closed, and we reckoned that employers and home workers are just ‘winging it’ in the hope that no unforeseen legal liabilities will arise from technically carrying on company business in one’s own home.
Hybrid working As the coronavirus lockdowns start to ease, the commercial landscape is edging a little more towards normality with some welcome signs of staff starting to return to work. It’s a very mixed picture though, as the idea of WFH has stuck and some staff now face the prospect of working in a ‘hybrid’ office instead. Hybrid working is the latest buzzword embracing the idea of spending some time at the office, and the rest of it remotely (eg, at home). The Swiss-based International Workplace Group (IWG) sells workspace for businesses around the world under various brands including Spaces and Regus, and they claim their premises are home to some 2½ million staffers. IWG reckons that interest in hybrid working is soaring, and some deals signed recently with Japan’s NTT and Standard Chartered will provide workspace for nearly 400,000 staff alone. In the UK, IWG says of hybrid working that ‘employers expect the proportion of regular home workers to double, from 18% pre-pandemic to 37% post-pandemic,’ while Britain’s Institute of Directors surveyed almost a thousand company directors last year and 74% said they would keep increased home-working post-lockdown. The UK Government is also heading down the Practical Electronics | June | 2021
