Coronavirus: Home sweet office

It’s taken Australians a long time to jump on board the WFH movement.

Back in the late 1990s, when the internet was in its infancy, there was speculation about how this new technology might free workers from the drudgery of daily commuting. Why go into the office when you can telecommute?

And so at every census since that time I have excitedly checked the proportion of the workforce that works from home, looking for a rising trend, but sadly it hasn’t budged off the 4-5 per cent mark. Despite an army of tech-savvy knowledge workers emerging over the past two decades, barely one worker in 20 worked from home.

But then along came the coronavirus and those who could work from home did so. We will never know exactly what proportion this peaked at, but my view is that it has to be at least 35 per cent. By next year’s census, a year after our release from lockdown, I think it will pull back to 10 per cent, or double the pre-corona proportion.

If my assessment is correct, this tectonic shift in work habits will be an important legacy of coronavirus. Despite advances in internet technology, it will have taken a global pandemic to get Australians to change the way they work. But what a change! Less commuting, reduced stress, fewer emissions and arguably greater productivity.

If the work-from-home movement does leap ahead as a consequence of the coronavirus, as I think it will, then the home must transform to accommodate the new arrangements. Often both partners work, so there’s an immediate need for multiple workstations throughout the home, especially for those with teenage kids studying. And calling colleagues by telephone is so last century; you need a webcam – with a bookish backdrop – and a dedicated space to livestream a Zoom or Skype video call. What was once the humble home office will be transformed into something requiring a smart new acronym like HOBO, for “home office broadcast outlet”. I’d love to marry the broadcast outlet with the Zoom option to create a BOZO space, but I don’t think that’s gonna fly as an acronym.

If at least one partner no longer commutes, perhaps we can dispense with the second car – and then the garage can morph into a home gym and storage facility. That’s good for the environment, right? And after all that real living during lockdown, maybe we’ll start cooking in what was once the pristine show kitchen and use the butler’s pantry as, well, a pantry.

Outside, the swish garden that was designed to be looked at can be dug up and converted into a vegie patch. Never again will we be caught short of beetroot. A rising work from home movement will build on a self-sufficiency theme that started during the millennium drought with water storage tanks and gathered momentum with solar-charged batteries stacked down the side of the house.

And then there’s the legacy of (generally) stronger relationships that come from a better understanding of a partner’s workaday stresses. Can this be the same person who took out the bins last night? Perhaps we’ll popularise terms to describe the personality change that takes place between the kitchen and the home office; we’ll toggle between personas required to manage living and working with loved ones in the same space.

For a nation obsessed with lifestyle, I’m surprised it’s taken Australians so long to jump on board the WFH movement. I suppose the next iteration would be to work from home in a lifestyle location. But that is another story and another movement that I think is just around the corner.