Once upon a time, the future of work was that we would all pile into multi story sky scrapers in the center of cities, using a clockwork efficient network of public transport moving above and below ground and to those with the boldest imagination even in personal aircraft to get to work from our equally flash skyscraper vertical housing solutions. Some may say that we got halfway there but at some point in probably the 1980s, we decided that we did not really like this business of living on top of one another and that we could really do without an hour traveling to work every morning because public transport systems never delivered on their promise. As a result, we did an about face and with the telecommunications breakthroughs of the 1990s, the anti-industrial age prospect of doing an honest days work from home started to sound very appealing.

Speaking in general terms, white collar workers are expected to be at their workstations being productive for 7.5 hours of the day, between 8:30AM and 6:00PM, Monday to Friday. This in it self is not that onerous but to a great many people this 7.5 hour commitment can actually consume up to 12 hours of their day. The ability to put in these hours from home cuts down on travel costs, food costs and doubtless creates less pollution however the amount of space per worker that requires warming in winter does go up massively. Moving froward from the 90s to now, everyone in the UK who has an office job should through communication technology be able to work from home. Why do more people not chose-ask to do so?

This very well researched article from the BBC sheds some light on the matter. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11879241

My own view is that more people should endeavor to work from home however in my experience, it is much harder to be creative working in isolation and I do not see creative studios becoming a thing of the past. There are very many terrific virtual collaboration tools out there which would make it a breeze to securely share files and manage projects remotely. A multitude of virtual meeting software products also facilitate face time, albeit less personal than a proper handshake. I do think it is a pity when i see buildings with hundreds of cubicle bound people ferreting away Dilbert style on their various projects. Surely we need to look harder at virtualising the workplace as it seems to be in everyone’s best interests.