A recent study by services company GHD, has revealed that 40% of people in the UK are considering moving to a different location as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. A higher proportion of those considering a move are among people living in urban areas and city centres. Sounds incredible doesn’t it? This first piece of research is mirrored by another study done by The London Assembly. This study showed 14 percent of Londoners want to leave the city as a result of the COVID pandemic and 33 percent of Londoners want to move to a new home.
The Reasons Why
The reasons given in both studies were broadly as follows:
- More space
- Make working from home easier
- Cleaner air environment
- Better local access to nature
- Live in a more environmentally sustainable location
With 27.8 million households in the UK, 11 million of them could be on the move in the next couple of years. Good news if you are an Estate Agent, but what could it mean for businesses more widely?
Businesses Need to Consider the Impact Now
Is your business or employer adapting and improve their technology platforms and ways of working in response to these likely changes? It might be wise to start now. Of course there will be those who miss the office environment. I suspect the majority will be happy to accept some form of balance between home and office working. That said, these studies suggest the life benefits your employees and customers seek are changing significantly. The only real question is at what point they will act on them. Once COVID has run its course, more fundamental changes to our work life, home life and aspirations for the future may shift quite profoundly. Those businesses that take a “wait and see” approach run the risk of losing their best employees and customers to those who are adapting now.
Companies can assume that office based working practices will return to pre-COVID levels. This is a big risk when research suggests that remote working from home will be an increasingly important consideration for companies of all sizes. Some companies are adapting to meet the needs of employees who want to work more remotely but many are not. Why do we know? We are working with some of them.
As experienced software developers, Elastic Mint do the majority of their work remotely. Elastic Mint are often required to work with teams of developers across multiple geographies and time zones. We know from experience the importance of setting up systems and working practices that meet the needs of remote workers. We find companies often fail to sufficiently consider factors such as communication, working practices, team leadership, employee evaluation, working culture differences and maintaining a consistent company culture.
