Name: Will office life ever be the same again? | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2020-09-01T19:10:13.000Z
Duration: 3 min 5 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

as something of a tipping point in the world of work.

Adverbs of manner

Largely, workers proved to their employers

that they could get their jobs done from home.

So what does the future hold for the office?

80% of people who worked from home during the lockdown

say they'd like to continue working at least one day from home

say that we're longing to return to the office in some form.

In other words, we want to have our cake and eat it.

The workplace property expert Antony Slumbers

and the office was just one way to create that.

many companies had moved to open-plan offices.

Well the promise was that we would be let loose

free to meet and bounce ideas off each other.

In fact, open-plan offices tended to make us feel

We've realised offices are good for some things.

The office had something called 'a network effect'.

bumping into colleagues and sharing thoughts just casually,

that we're finding so difficult to replace.

And there seems to be some pretty good evidence

that our best 'aha' moments happen in these chance encounters.

Professor Sandy Pentland from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

says the reason why these conversations are so effective

is that these are the moments that we don't find ourselves

So if the office was good for a few things

and the top one - chatting to colleagues -

Maybe your firm will join something that's starting to be called

where workers work from the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays

And no doubt, in time, someone will come with a catchy name

Other firms are being still more adventurous,

saying they want to free up workers to do their work

They're adopting what's being known as asynchronous working.

When we do something synchronously it means we're coordinated in time,

'how about we allow people to give their feedback or their ideas

say it allows workers the flexibility to take their kids to school

and this is what the asynchronous working firms believe

will attract the best workers to come to work for them.

Expect to hear a lot more of the word 'hybrid'.

some firms are even talking about only getting their employees together

Meaning that, almost certainly, they don't need an office.

...for many office workers, the era of getting up every day

and going to the same place seems to be a thing of the past.

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Will office life ever be the same again? | BBC Ideas

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