This is London's financial center,
the City of London, at 1pm
Around half a million people work here.
Well, not any more.
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed our relationship
with the office perhaps forever.
Millions of white-collar workers have seen
they don't have to be married to a regimented
commute-to-work, at-your-desk-by-nine system.
Instead they have found they can have
a more open relationship with the office.
But the effects of that change are significant,
streets like this which at rush hour
you could barely squeeze down are now quiet
and inside these towers it's the same situation.
Although after the pandemic, things will get busier,
it's not clear they will return to the way they were.
Survey after survey shows workers want flexibility
but more surprisingly, managers and bosses
are listening and many are joining the push
for flexible work.
So are these changes here to stay
and if they are, what does that mean for the office
and those of us who work in them?
During the Covid lockdown, there's been a schism
between those who've realized - wait,
I need the office - like me and those who are happy
to spend less time there like my co-producer Tom.
When I take a coffee break,
I get to see my three-year-old
and that is great.
I've enjoyed that a lot.
And I'm also kind of fortunate,
I have a good microphone here, I have a camera from work,
I can move it around and hide my mess in time
to do an interview.
Like it has worked pretty well for me
to do my job and do it in this sort of isolated workstation
that I've created.
I live in a shared flat where it's hard
to be productive and given the choice
between an office with a desk and free coffee
and all the rest, it's a simple choice.
I like being in the office.
It just has to be different for different people, right?
Different people have different struggles
and different people find the office as a solution
or find the office as a part of that struggle.
The Covid pandemic has forced
a radical experiment on us.
And the results of that experiment are coming in.
Companies now know if employees can work remotely,
they know if teams are still being productive
and workers have gotten a taste for flexibility
and they like it.
Before the paradigm in the office world was,
I'm going to the office nine-to-five
and if not, I have to explain why
or I'm doing something unusual.
Now, I know that I can stay home one or two days a week
or that I could come at different hours
and that impacts overall demand.
Dror Poleg is an author and property advisor
to some of the world's biggest companies.
He argues things aren't going back
to the way they were - deal with it.
I think at some point things change fundamentally.
There's a difference between employees being away
or offices being empty for two or three months
and between offices being empty for a year or 15 months
like, you just don't go back to the same place
after such a length of period.
Dror argues workers have adjusted,
they've got new routines and habits.
So what will become the new normal?
Surveys show workers are splitting their time
between the office and home and want to keep it that way.
Management liked the idea too.
A UK survey of over 2,000 office workers found most
do not intend to spend five days a week in the workplace,
even when the pandemic is over. With both bosses
and employees seeing homeworking as a long-term trend.
A survey by business consultancy McKenzie
of 800 global executives found 15% will allow staff
to work remotely two or more days a week.
In the finance sector, the Netherlands' biggest bank predicts
that staff will be working about half their time from home
once the pandemic is over.
And in Italy Uni Credit plans to have 40%
of work done remotely after the crisis.
It's important to say this shift
is not being seen across the economy.
In the U.S. more than 60% of workers cannot work remotely,
their jobs require at least some physical presence,
but for millions of white collar workers
the scale and speed of this change
should not be underestimated.
In a prime market like New York or London
or San Francisco or even Shanghai or Hong Kong,
a company spends between 12,000 to $20,000 a year
on putting an employee in a seat, in an office.
Now, one of the most interesting questions
that I think companies will ask themselves now is not - okay,
can I save money by telling everyone to go home -
but they can ask themselves if I take $15,000
and spend it differently
can I make my employee more productive?
Can I make my employee happier?
Can I maybe attract better people than I currently have?
And I think in many cases
the answer to that question will be yes.
Dror believes we are living
through nothing short of a revolution
in the way we use offices.
And there are going to be winners and losers.
To destabilize the office and to cause a revolution,
you only need 10 to 15% of demand to shift
and I think that's what's happening.
Jack, there's been recent survey data
that you've got hold of about occupancy rates around here.
What are they like?
Are these buildings practically empty?
Yeah, I mean, they're certainly more than half empty.
Jack Sidders is
Bloomberg's European commercial property reporter
and he's been told privately
what commercial real estate agencies won't say publicly.
If you were speaking to them off the record
then you'd detect a much more significant amount of concern.
And you actually you see it
with some of the public statements,
you've seen real estate leaders come out and say publicly,
look, we need to get people back, come on,
come on politicians you need to sort this out.
So those of you
who are feeling very comfortable,
never coming back into the office,
well bad news, experts agree that for most of us
we will still have a relationship with the office
just not as demanding
but even if workers return four out of five work days,
that's still a huge reduction
and it's got investor's attention.
What you see if you look at share prices
of the big office landlords is that
they're down substantially this year.
Much of the London, the big London office landlords,
are down 30, 40, 50% this year
but the valuation of their assets has barely changed.
It's likely that both of those numbers are wrong
and it'll be somewhere in between.
With growing consensus that office workers
will be splitting their time between the office
and perhaps their home,
flexible workspaces find themselves well-positioned
to take advantage.
Tania Adir is the co-founder and CEO of Uncommon,
a London-based flexible working company founded in 2015.
She agrees things aren't going back to the way they were
but sees a bright future for the office.
It's very difficult to run a team
if people are completely in different locations.
Yes you can work from home,
you can work from a coffee shop one day a week
but at the same time to really have that connection
between individuals where I think ideas come to life,
you do want to be present in physical space together.
Tania is betting offices will shift
from being primarily places where you go to get work done
to places where you go to collaborate and build teams.
You don't necessarily need to go to the office,
you don't need to waste the time of commuting.
The reasons for that office to exist
are fundamentally to come and meet
your colleagues, collaborate,
be able to come together and work on the presentation
on the new idea to exchange sort of energies fundamentally
with each other.
This trend of making offices
places for collaboration has been going on for years
but the Covid pandemic has shifted the dial.
The argument's not around will work be more flexible,
it's about how flexible it will be.
The office of the future is not a place.
The office of the future is a network that allows me
to enable my employees to access whatever it is
that they need to access right now
in order to produce their best possible work.
And of course to be happy and to keep coming back
and to give their talents to my business
and not to anyone else.
Tania agrees that satellite offices
will become more common but argues for most of us,
the office will still play a major role.
Naturally when everything normalizes,
people would want to still have their headquarters,
their culture, their identity to be able to connect
and I think there is a very loud voice
out there saying we're all very productive from home
but I think there is a silent majority
that are not that productive at home.
And they just, they are not being necessarily being heard
because your kids are around, your pet is disturbing you,
your neighbors doing decoration, renovation
and making noise.
After a year of working from home,
the gloss may have come off and many of us will start
to miss the office.. But will anyone, bosses or workers,
really want to go back to the old ways?
v
but instead of cramming us in the new office
may well be spacier with more room to collaborate.
And most importantly, we will come in when we need to,
not because we have to.