With many more people likely to work from home for longer, local government offices are likely to become smaller and focused on collaboration.
Coronavirus has changed homeworking from a minority pursuit to a mainstream one. In 2019, just one in eight workers had worked from home in the week they were surveyed by the Office for National Statistics. By April this year that had risen to nearly half according to updated ONS data, reaching two-thirds for managers, directors, senior officials and professionals.
Socitm’s own research has found an even bigger shift, with the proportion of local authority staff working from home rising from 5% before the pandemic to 82% in May and June this year. While this has generated some technology-related problems exacerbated by a lack of training in advance of moving to new working practices, nearly half of more than 2,500 respondents said that homeworking has improved their work-life balance. Other reported benefits included increased productivity and learning new ICT skills.
The vast majority have moved to homeworking because of the impact of coronavirus. But as employers plan for a time when Covid-19 is under control, the question is whether this inadvertent mass experiment in remote working should continue – and if so, what should happen to significantly less-used offices as a result.
“I think the future of local government has a lot less office space in it,” says Socitm President, Sam Smith. “What’s become clear from this crisis is that authorities are not about the physical spaces, but the people, the technology, the procedures.”
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