Home office or office? How about a balance

The traditional working day that has been largely known as 9-5 from the office has, by the looks of things, died. And the remote style of working has become a hot debate especially since Covid hit the world and sent it to lockdown for many months.

Covid is now finally slowly but surely coming to an end. Does this mean that the style of work we’ve all been used to will return?

How the future of work post-Covid will look like, will depend on multiple factors. Mainly on the employers as well as the employees and how they wish to continue working now when Covid is almost over.

Home or office or else?

That’s the ultimate question. After two years of everyone working from home, it started to lose its appeal somewhat, let’s be honest.

Working from home has proven hard, especially for parents of young or school-going children who had to juggle looking after them as well as try to be at least half productive at work. It had brought in social isolation, “zoom fatigue”, inability to concentrate & destroyed work-life balance due to people not being able to clearly divide between their work and life. Especially when work ends and life begins.

The remote style of work has become extremely common and has often been referred to throughout the pandemic time as the “new normal”. But is it really the new normal? It is for some, but certainly not for everyone. So what is the solution here? Is there an ideal way to work in the post-Covid world?

The numbers game

The answer may just lie in a 3-2-2 model and its variants. Let’s take a look into it in a bit more detail.

Simply put, the 3-2-2 model is essentially exactly what the numbers suggest. It is where people choose to work three days in the office, two from home, and are off for the other two.

This arrangement would work very well for most as it allows for a lot of flexibility in people’s personal as well as professional lives & certainly, creates a better work-life balance than being in the office 5x a week.

With that said, working from home full time has, however, come to a few people as a blessing in disguise. Those who were often sick when working in open office spaces or had a hard time concentrating on really focused work, or got distracted very often in the office was the home office trend a real Godsend.

Some people can and do really thrive working from home. They can concentrate better, they simply get more done and their health, both mental and physical, gets a boost.

But every coin has two sides. As we had already mentioned the classic 5-day office working is, by the looks of things dead and Covid also proved, that a full-time home office also isn’t ideal for everyone.

People need to have regular social contacts too and sometimes it really is much faster to just “tap a colleague's shoulder” to quickly ask a question or have a chat than to set up yet another Zoom call in an already full-on day filled with online meetings. Besides this, and especially now, almost post-Covid, catching up at various cultural events with the team can be a nice touch and would definitely help to add a welcome spark into the whole team dynamic.

Is there a middle ground?

You’d be glad to know there is. There are a few of them actually. First one we’ve touched on already. The 3-2-2 model or its alternatives such as 2-3-2, 4-1-2, or 1-4-2. Another one is open & honest communication with your employer on a solution that will best suit your current lifestyle and a personal life situation.

And last but not least is the option to start utilizing co-working or shared office spaces, where you can “rent” a table for a day or for however long it will suit you. This way you can quickly & easily create a visible & tangible barrier between your work life and home life. To clearly divide productive vs. relaxing time while still working away from the office but also not in the space of your own home.

Co-working spaces provide a welcoming & very creative working environment. They are quite common, often very modern spaces, centrally located and are very well equipped with technology, good quality coffee & food choices available as well as communication technology and strong & reliable internet connection. Many, predominantly younger people like to use them to bring a little bit of fresh air into their working routines and maybe even meet new & inspiring people and socialize with like-minded individuals.

To summarize

How to best end today’s blog? By changing the way we think about work, by focusing on restructuring work into a more of a flow, and using technology to work in tandem & improve on our human capabilities, we can improve our potential and create a work environment where people and teams are equipped with the right tools, technology, and culture to contribute their full potential & happiness & overall job satisfaction.