Like a lot of things it began with the cleaners. You may be old enough to remember when there were actual cleaners in offices before they all vanished about 20 years ago.
In fact they didn’t disappear, they just got outsourced. That usually meant that nothing much got cleaned especially anymore, but bins were changed at night by unseen hands – the invisible Morlocks in fluorescent bibs, wearing the last person’s name-badge.
Now there are plans for us to outsource our offices altogether. In this case it might make sense: after all, if it’s not your core business, why bother? You’re better off leaving it to the experts.
Of course, the arrival of contracted out offices was well underway before the pandemic (Wework, notwithstanding its mishaps, operates in more than 100 countries, evidence of putative demand and business ambition, if not of profit). But what’s most interesting about the impact of Covid on the workspace is that instead of killing offices off altogether as many of us predicted, it seems that 18 months spent locked down at home has only increased workers’ appetite to go to the office – but only under the right conditions.
You’ll recall that, at first, companies for whom the idea of remote working was ‘an aberration’ (to quote Goldman boss David Solomon), lured their staff back to offices with benefits: so during the pandemic Goldman Sachs offered its staff free breakfasts and lunches to get them into work (perks which were ended last September in London).
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