[Music] remember when monday mornings were like [Music] this they’re a bit different now [Music] while those of us lucky to be working are now doing so from a spare bedroom or kitchen table the coronavirus has forced a sudden and mostly successful pivot to working away from the office while the circumstances are unwelcome there are some benefits to this style of working you have a more content workforce more motivated workforce and and also a more productive and efficient workforce as well so when the coronavirus is behind us will our workday ever be the same again [Music]

we spend a lot of our time traveling to work and for most the commute is getting longer all over the world globally two-fifths of professionals consider the commute to be the worst part of their day commuting has been found to be a major cause for stress that impacts on our physiological health and as well well-being the total working day gets longer you get less time at home you do less exercises when you have long commutes you also cook less healthy food i followed swedish couples over a 10-year period and we found that commuting long distances to work over one hour increases the risk of separation overall we find that it’s a 40 increase of risk of separating before the pandemic approximately 25

million u.s workers spent more than 90 minutes getting to and from their jobs every day in south korea one in four workers has a journey that long one of those people is park john pan a manager at a major telecoms company basically i throw away three hours of my day time just to get to work and to come back home since february sk telecom has instructed its employees including yong han to work from home or if suitable to work from smaller local offices in the surrounding neighborhoods of seoul one of the mobile offices if i walk it takes about 15 minutes i truly appreciate the time and and it actually comes back to motivation to to work harder it’s not just time it’s a very quality time that i spent instead of you know getting stuck in a bus you know get stuck in a traffic somewhere it’s it cannot compare the amount of time that i spent with my

family really increased you know during lunch time i can have lots of time with my son have you just shortened your hours and you’re able to go and like you said exercise more or do you find yourself working more as a result because it’s been too long i totally forgot about it but in the very beginning when this program started um i was exhausted actually uh during the first few days because there is no place for for rest right because i i need to work anywhere wherever i go um my mind was always on work and when i talked to the teammates they actually felt the same in the beginning but after a few weeks um i i think everyone found their own way to work and now i know how to adjust you know myself into you know work mode versus you know rest mode and so on so losing that journey into work could

be good for us but research claims our commute can also provide us with a means to separate our personal and professional lives and in a world of 10 second bed to laptop commutes that’s a chance for some me time but while journey times were already generally on the up more of us were actually starting to commute less thanks to a relatively new trend flexible working increasingly we have seen people remote working from lots of different locations there has been a reluctance to encourage flexible working perhaps because managers see it as a loss of control it can be quite difficult to manage people who you don’t necessarily see on a day-to-day basis there might be concerns around efficiency or productivity and is that a bit of a myth or is any of that borne out in fact what we’ve found is that productivity

can actually improve as a result of flexible working and there isn’t necessarily any impact upon the business if it’s managed effectively there’s quite a lot of benefits there is an opportunity for workers to have more autonomy over their scheduling over when they work and where they work and when people have that degree of autonomy it does lead to a workforce that is happier you may have flexibility over the time that you have to go into work or the time that you can come home so that you’re able to avoid rush hour traffic and if you’re working from home a few days a week or completely at home then obviously you can avoid the commuting altogether and there’s also benefits for employers a study by harvard and new york university found that for those working from home the workday is 48 minutes longer probably replacing that time you spent commuting there’s significant benefits for organizations

that are able to manage these kind of processes effectively so what actions can organizations implement to harness the power of flexible working they need to have very clear processes and procedures around operating flexible work so that everybody has the same expectations one department allows um the majority of their employees to work flexibly in another department which is led by another line manager who has a different view then you might find that flexible working isn’t as supported as much you need to treat people consistently and in a fair way but you also need to recognize that there can be individual differences in how people adapt to flexible working it will some suit some people but not others so you do need to have a degree of flexibility yourself as a manager in how you manage teams and how you manage people and this flexibility can lead to

productivity a two-year stanford study of a thousand employees at one company found that working from a home office resulted in a 13 increase in productivity and 50 percent of them were less likely to quit despite this half of them still wanted to go back to the office nine months later even though their average commute was 40 minutes each way another survey conducted by bain and company on its own employees found that productivity increased for some thanks to no commute and an ability to focus better at home but also decreased for others due to a lack of work mindset and a dedicated workspace so perhaps we’ll start to see a more hybrid style become the norm where for some days we work from home for specific solo tasks and others we travel to the office to meet and collaborate with the team the changing nature of our working lives has already led to many white collar workers leaving the city or moving

further out to find more space some greenery or to escape the urban beeps and bustle one person who misses the commute is alice shea an urban planner and designer i miss riding the subway uh riding the subway is one of those incredible experiences in new york city it’s got a ties it’s got its lows but honestly the subway system in new york city is one of the greatest levers for equity that we have it is one price to get all the way across the city many of us are now working from home you know or at least for a couple of days of the week will where we live drastically change do you think we’re in a moment where commutes can be zero so what does that mean for how we are distributed across our settlements and urban agglomerations i think it provides a lot of flexibility for certain workers it’s true but there’s other ties that keep people to place right it’s not just about commute so that’s one factor amongst many access to services access to family um

access to the you know the culture that keeps the city alive or your lifestyle interesting so the the city as we know it isn’t exactly going anywhere but uh it might change in the way that we use it and the the way it works our uh street infrastructure and streetscapes can be reconfigured in a time of social distancing when we’re understanding that private cars may not be as essential as we thought they were we posited that if you took the streetscape in manhattan which is equivalent to four times the size of central park reconfigured it in a way that actually looked at streetscapes as being about space for mobility and distribution at a bigger scale so how do we actually decrease the number of cars and what are the opportunities that come with that so increased space for pedestrians and walking more effective uh distribution systems buses could run at least twice as fast getting people around the city in an equitable way

the transformation of the way that we use our streetscapes could also enable better delivery of urban systems is there an opportunity to to build more equality in cities you know key workers for instance who who aren’t doing jobs on a laptop right now they have to be in those areas don’t they you know no matter what i mean you bring up a great point service workers essential workers they are geographically bound mobile healthcare could be distributed more widely more equitably particularly if there’s government and public drivers behind the way that that is distributed we’re also seeing massive changes in the way that retail is happening right many many shops are closed when we have times when cities are more porous when there’s flux when you know real estate sector isn’t so saturated that porousness allows for an opportunity for micro entrepreneurship and also um new innovations

at a kind of small scale um you know small businesses that are starting up food trucks that are going to be distributing food across the city um different types of services that operate in different types of places [Music] our changing relationship with work could affect where we live too it could accelerate and move to what’s known in urban planning theory as the polycentric city polycentric city would be a place where you can work you can live you can recreate you can have your social life your family in a more local and distributed way in cities like paris it’s known as the 15-minute city where daily necessities are within a 15-minute reach on foot or by bike you reduce transit times you reduce ghg emissions and also you provide more equitable more sustainable access to services by this more distributed city model but that’s not to say that you need to live in the suburbs right

so what’s to say the office can’t come closer to us i think going forward companies will need to support workers in that externality um and it could take many forms does everyone want to work from home no some people like going to a place commuting how are companies that usually would say come to your our main office oh now actually we have a set of sponsored co-working spaces across the city that are closer to where you live and can decrease your commute and maybe you go to those spaces three days a week and you come into the office too i think we’re going to see a whole range of new types of work as people have gained confidence in the efficiency of work from home during this time [Music] since the virus outbreak serviced office brand regis has already seen a surge of more than 40 in activity in new york city commuter hub southern connecticut in the uk house builders are seeing

developments outside of london driven by a change in home office working while experiences and jobs vary all over the world many workers have come to expect change more than 90 percent of people in a recent survey said they wouldn’t return to the office full time after covid there’s reasons for employers to embrace the change too some already are twitter and facebook have said the switch could become permanent for large parts of their workforce the covert 19 pandemic has sent shock waves through the world of work having an on-off relationship with the office could make us happier and more productive while also helping the environment and making our cities more livable
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source: https://youtu.be/nE2NT_Wt46A