Is working from home here to stay?
A recent study found that 44% of UK workers consider working at home a recipe for happiness with 61% of people keen to support government policies to promote hybrid working practices.
Working at home has fast become the done thing, the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdowns meant that for a period of time workers had no other option as factories, office buildings, shops and other places of work were forced to close their doors pushing people to the kitchen table, a laptop on the knee while juggling homeschooling with numerous zoom calls.
From a construction point of view, businesses like ours have had to adapt to social distancing rules, the wearing of masks and other procedures that have been put into place as working from home (apart from our office staff) isn’t really an option, we quickly ordered more PPE including masks and antibacterial hand wash and undertook basic staff training to make sure everyone was up to date and prepared to continue working.
Introducing nature into the workplace in some way has always been recognised as a way of maximising productivity while helping to boost workers’ mental health, in fact bringing the outside in is something that large companies and corporations such as Amazon and Microsoft for example have done brilliantly, Amazon’s Seattle headquarters is actually home to more than 40,000 plants from around the world, providing workers with an environment that’s more like a tropical rainforest in the clouds than an office and this way of working is slowly being integrated into and around small home and garden offices across the UK, along with other benefits such as lowering commuting costs and improving a work-life balance.
At Bluebell North West we have seen a rise in people converting bedrooms and lofts, even garages into fully functional office spaces to help them work better, smarter and more productive in fact a recent survey by Jabra wireless headsets, proved that, due to the aforementioned lockdowns, productivity has increased according to around half of UK workers (56%), who don’t usually work from home.
In terms of work and projects at Bluebell NW we had previously built garden rooms or converted other spaces and quickly saw opportunity here to both generate more enquiries into our business but to also provide a dedicated service creating offices and work spaces for individuals. Our garden rooms and room conversions are of the finest quality and carried out by our skilled team of tradesmen.
Whether it be working on the kitchen table or in a purpose built office in the garden working from home is definitely here to stay.
