As we cautiously enter April 2021, an announcement yesterday by Santander recalled my April 3rd article last year on the effect of the pandemic which, a year ago, few of us expected to still be raging a year later.
The main thrust of that article (see below) was the probable shift to homeworking. In the article, I quoted Jack Dorsey CEO of Twitter telling his people that homeworking was fine forever. Well, yet another organization, among many, have made that determination. Santander (a major European bank with offices across the EU and UK) announced yesterday that not only would it close 111 branch offices (impacting more than 800 staff) - reflecting increased customer usage of online facilities - but would allow some 5,000 non-customer-facing staff to continue working from home. Even after lockdowns are lifted (assuming they are), the bank sees that these people will have the option of combining remote/homeworking with 'access to local collaboration centers'. They also plan to close their London offices and move to more modest premises in Milton Keynes. This announcement follows another UK-based financial services firm, Nationwide, that 13,000 of its non-customer-facing staff could ditch the commute permanently.
Of course, as I suggested a year ago, as these changes begin to bite, the impact on city centers - property prices, local services (restaurants, entertainment facilities, etc., even traffic patterns) could be seriously impacted. My sense is that these changes are unstoppable. After all, why spend a fortune, suffer the commute stress that we have all known, waste hours traveling, when one can do a perfectly good job from home? But the change causes problems for some: the home environment may not be ideal, poor communication infrastructure may limit effectiveness, the lack of personal interaction is a serious loss, and the one 'benefit' of the commute - putting a gap between office and home - will be lost. However, local shared collaboration centers may be a solution. I would expect that such centers will be established near to residential areas - open airy spaces with good parking - where homeworkers can go for a more 'office feel' to the day, and with better facilities than at home including in-person social interaction, coffee machines, printers, excellent communications infrastructure, conference facilities, and the like.
Could this be the beginning of a general, if slow, shift away from crowded, polluted, and expensive city centers?
