When we started out with DayShift we expected to hear about tales of anxiety and difficulty. The more that we spoke with people, something more radiant was taking place.
Yes, working from home still felt different and strange, but people were doing better than we anticipated. And in some cases better than they expected themselves. There is plenty of talk about what was normal, what has become normal, and how normal is such a tricky notion to pin down.
In the popular press, it is common to read predictions about the future of the office, the future of working from home, and the future of workplaces. When pundits offer sweeping predictions about how and where people will work they veer toward polemic arguments. Some expect things will change forever. While others expect us to forget the things of 2020-21 even happened. In our writing for DayShift we are less inclined to predict things, but we want to focus on the many ways that behaviour is shifting. We also want to provide scale about the shifts that we see are underway.
According to a study commissioned by Miro in 2021, 49% of participants surveyed said their relationship with their spouse was better now that they are working from home. 62% feel their relationship with their kids was better off as well. Both of those findings are powerful motivators.
It might explain why 34% of the same sample expected to continue working from home, even after the pandemic emergency is put behind us. To put that into perspective Economists, Erik Brynolfsen et al., estimate that roughly 7% of Americans had worked from home for more than 8 hrs a week prior to the lockdowns of 2020.
Design in context: What about the larger things where work and home life converge? Things like relating, belonging, marriage, family, and other human needs?
