Covid-19 and working from home: author Gideon Haigh asks if the pandemic has changed our relationship with the office forever?
Writer Gideon Haigh calls his latest book The Momentous, Uneventful Day ‘a short history, a few speculations’. In it, he explores the pros and cons of being freed from the office
The Momentous, Uneventful Day by Gideon Haigh, Scribe
My career started in a broom cupboard. It had no windows or phone outlets, but a desk and chair made it my space during the hours I worked at a media company in the 1990s. Even then, having a door I could close was more appealing than being in an open-plan hubbub.
This year, millions of people forced to abandon their offices have come to the same conclusion. They may have found other ways to carve out privacy for themselves, but the coronavirus has turned open plans and hot desks into hot topics and changed the way many feel about their places of work.
The ability to concentrate, although a challenge for those sharing home offices with partners and children, may explain why, contagion fears notwithstanding, employees continue to drag their heels in returning to the office.
“What people have systematically underestimated is the need for no interruptions, for people to be able to get on with what they’re doing,” says author Gideon Haigh, by phone from Australia. “As I say in my book, that’s one of the reasons why working from home has proved pretty popular; all of a sudden, people have their privacy back after all these years.”