Home Working – Could this be the new normal?

Written by Murray:

Well, what do you think to increasing everyone’s chances of working from home?

Working from home could be great for people just starting in the world of work. It could help parents who have young children, especially with regards to the school run. It could free up days and times for brothers and sisters who support their family and friends. It could also really help those who find it difficult to travel to work.

There are some definite strong pros to homeworking. I think it reduces the huge set-up costs for business parks and infrastructure. It reduces the initial cost for people at college and university of getting to work. It reduces the costs of passing your driving test, buying a car, and running a car to get to work.

It reduces the traffic jams that are already getting bad on Burton Road, Warwick Avenue, Manor Road, and down by Kingsway and the Royal Derby. I think that also applies to most of the retail parks in Derby, which all seem to have traffic jams at key times in the day.

It could also be safer at home and you would have better conditions for working. For at least 6 months of the year, from November to April, the weather can be cold, wet, and rainy. Catching a bus or walking in it can be uncomfortable. I know when I used to catch the bus from Burton Road, sometimes the bus would not turn up and I would have to walk in the cold to work at the Westfield.

It would also be good to look at some home working for people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. Maybe some jobs and careers would suit working from home, e.g., customer service, market research, multimedia, recruitment, HR, admin, IT support, and offline and online customer support teams. When I was doing courses at Derby College during the pandemic, I was communicating to the course administrator, who worked from home. So it is possible.

I think it would be great if we at least looked into the whole idea of working from home post-pandemic and maybe tried to have 10% of the working economy based at home. And maybe after establishing a good platform, we try to set targets to increase that to 15% or 20%?

I still think it's important for teams to go into work, but maybe we could encourage some companies to have a balance of both. Maybe some companies could develop home-working strategies like Derby College, University of Derby, Alstom, and Rolls-Royce have done. Maybe Monday to Wednesday, staff go in for meetings and to catch up on projects and then on Thursday and Friday work from home. Maybe some established companies like Amazon could join in with offline/online home-working customer support teams.

It would be good to have a good mixture of both for everyone.