Google has announced that it will continue with work from home (WFH) till June-July 2021. TCS says that by 2025, it expects only about a quarter of its workforce to turn up for work at offices. Different companies will have different policies. Some will privilege the bonding and innovation arising from unstructured interactions at the office, others will value the saving in office rentals that institutionalised WFH would reap. The net result is likely to be that fewer people would commute to work any given day and that more people would work from home.
This need not necessarily mean a big dip in rents per unit area. The demand for office space could go up, from new businesses and if the potential for WFH is realised on a global scale, with, say, companies in Hong Kong, Singapore and London relocating staff to India, with local office hubs to coordinate work. Fresh pandemics cannot be ruled out, even if an effective vaccine defangs Covid-19. Airconditioning will fundamentally change, sanitising the air it expels and cooling the air it inducts, using thermal exchange processes. Offices would reconfigure, allowing for social distancing. Changes in residential accommodation could be even more radical.
Afamily in which both partners work will need a home that is much larger than what they make do with today: each worker will need a room that is reasonably insulated from noises, children and pets. A lot of young workers in the information technology industry live in shared flats and even shared rooms. Sheltering their screens bearing confidential client information from others working in close proximity would be a challenge. Could arrays of work cubicles with affordable rentals built close to residential complexes be the answer, offices agreeing to pay for the privacy such cubicles could purchase?
Changes in connectivity — 5G telecom and satellite services of the kind that Elon Musk plans, with his 1,200 satellites in the near-earth orbit — means that WFH could spread the residential real estate boom to anywhere with decent living conditions and an assured power supply.
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