We’re no longer in the office surrounded by our coworkers, lured by the temption for yet another delicious coffee by the cafe below us nor are we gathering around the kettle for our mid-morning brew or two. Instead, we’re remote working or working from home - whatever you want to call it, it’s a real thing now and could be the way of working in the future. 

With the likes of Twitter, Square and more recently Shopify announcing they will be encouraging employees to work from home for the foreseeable future. It’s understandable to see why remote working could be deemed as the way forward. 

Yet the misconception is that working from home is easy, you have loads of freedom and are quite productive as you sit there in your comfies possibly on your sofa, working away. Is that always the case? Not so much, there could be the off chance that your neighbours are having major renovation work done, or your children think it’s play time because you’re at home more. Usually, you wouldn’t be distracted by the noise as you sat at your desk with your bacon sandwich from the cafe below - unless your office is near a nursery and/or a building site (unfortunate for you if it is!), but you are and your productivity is slacking because of it. There’s also the discipline side, we all claim discipline is a key strength - but when working from home, you truly need to have this nailed in order to separate work time from home time. If you can’t do that, then you really should minimise your time working from home. 

With that being said, we wanted to get a better view of remote working, and what’s better than asking your own team?

There’s definitely a place for mixed working, operating on a half and half basis. Not everyone wants to work from an office, especially when they’re more productive remotely and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean the team element dies out either, there’s still the opportunity for the team to come into the workplace and have discussions, or even chat over online platforms such as Team, Zoom, Slack and many more. It’s all about having trust in your team which is what we’re built on. 

There might be a shift into more remote working, but death of the office? I don’t think so. There are still many times where it’s much better to meet and discuss things in person, plus it’s always easier to train people i.e. apprentices in person. Although it’s possible to do it online - it’s more convenient in person.

The majority of the team agree, remote working is simply based on the person’s character and circumstance. Some can work from home and have the ability to separate work and home life, others can’t ‘clock off’ and the work is always there. Remote working isn’t necessarily going to be THE future, but it sure is going to become a part of our working future as we know it. With many of us feeling thankful for the possibility of mixed working when things get back to normal - whatever normal may be.