Bill Jamieson: Goodbye spare room (or broom cupboard), hello home office

Do you have a fully kitted-out home office? Or a broom cupboard with a wobbly ledge for the laptop PC? Get ready for change.

Soon homes will be judged on the quality of their office spaces. Picture: Getty

This time last year I was eagerly contemplating a study annexe to my house in Lochearnhead. For years I had put up with a tiny room off the lounge, fit only for storing brushes and buckets. There was barely room to move for accumulated bric-à-brac. Even the cat found it cramped. But the cupboard had the advantage of a small window looking out to the pavement and the A85 to see who was calling.

Foolishly, I paused the project earlier this year, before the coronavirus plague and lockdown. It was the worst decision I made. For I suspect among the enduring features of this devastating virus will be the change not only to office work and the hassle of commuting, but also to the design of what we used to call, until now, “the residential home”.

Bang goes the so-called spare bedroom. The “must-have” feature will now be “home office accommodation” – and that dusty broom cupboard will not suffice. It has to be a pleasant place in which to work, with a good-sized work desk, bookshelves, filing cabinets, plenty of sockets for all manner of devices, a firm door to shut off noise from the rest of the house, an easy chair – and a window with a pleasing view.

It is one of two big changes in our everyday lives. The second is a sweeping reappraisal of what we have come to regard as “essentials” but which have fallen away due to the combination of squeezed household incomes and drastically reduced visits to town centres and shops. “Impulse purchasing” has fallen off sharply. Remember the days when we went to a shop to buy one thing and came out with five? Do we really need all the stuff that quickly accumulates in bottom drawers and wardrobes? Will there be a lasting retail bounce-back to the status quo ante once lockdown restrictions are lifted? The plague has changed us. We reappraise what we really, really need. Recession is the mother of many things. Among them is lifestyle decluttering.

And in these changes, we are far from alone as the local and global economy is being rewritten before our eyes. Take, for example, the new essential of the home office, and the remarks last week of Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of the digital giant Facebook with its one billion-plus users worldwide.

The Covid-19 pandemic, he said, will pave the way for most of its 48,000 employees in 70 offices around the world to request a permanent change in their jobs and allow them to work remotely. The company has already made a start making most of its US job openings eligible for remote hires and will begin taking applications for permanent remote work among its workforce later this year.

“We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale,” he declared. “I think that it’s possible that over the next five to 10 years – maybe closer to 10 than five – we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently.”

Facebook is the largest company yet to move aggressively into remote work in the wake of the pandemic and marks a major shift in Silicon Valley thinking where huge companies were built on the idea of close physical proximity.

Twitter announced last week it would give most of its workforce the option of working remotely. Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said the company is considering additional remote work flexibility beyond letting most employees stay home through the end of the year.

Now, of course, there are many companies and sectors where home or distance working is inapplicable – engineering, construction, auto assembly, transport and warehouse distribution to name a few. But there are many office work occupations where we are not likely to return to the nine-to-five, five days a week office job, with the grinding commute into town and city centres.

Office attendance requirements will still apply. But companies will be minded to configure attendance for only certain days of the week for conferences, collaboration and task-setting.

Equally, retail outlets in many areas will still survive and thrive, but with a permanent shift to click-and-collect and online ordering and delivery.

It looks dire for retail now – retail sales have suffered a colossal slump, with an 18 per cent plunge last month, with non-food sales suffering a massive 41.7 per cent decline.

As if the lockdown and social distancing with most outlets is not bad enough, the record rise in unemployment is set to impact on sales long after the lockdown is eased. The EY ITEM Club suspects that consumer spending will contract by around 15 per cent quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, more than 30,000 pubs, bars and restaurants may remain permanently closed as the coronavirus shutdown has sent a wrecking ball through the hospitality industry, one most keenly felt in tourist mecca Edinburgh and many of our highland towns and villages.

Casual Dining Group, which owns the Bella Italia and Café Rouge restaurant chains, warned last week that it was headed for administration, casting doubt over the future of its 250 restaurants.

The enforced period of closure could be the final straw from some business operators who were having a tough time before the crisis hit. About 2,800 bars and restaurants closed down in the 12 months before the lockdown began.

However, some recovery in May’s flash Purchasing Managers Index suggests that the economy is through the worst of the downturn. A decline in inflationary pressure, a development likely to persist over coming months, offered another positive.

Some rural parts of the UK have seen a surge in job adverts posted, despite the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation. Job postings in natural habitat area Breckland and South Norfolk jumped 8.7 per cent between early and mid-May. Parts of Scotland and north-eastern England, it added, also saw an increase, which the REC chief executive described as “encouraging. Hopefully, other regions will start to follow in the coming weeks”. We should keep an eye out for these more positive signs, difficult though it is amid all the gloom.