Watching the recent Panorama documentary by the excellent Zoe Conway was very thought provoking indeed. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth 30 minutes of your time and represents a balanced view of where we are with such an important topic. The link is here.
It got me thinking about our own experiences and how we, as a business as well as individuals, have dealt with it. It also reminded me that I had previously written a couple of blogs on the subject. After a lot of hours searching, mainly by my lovely colleague Louise, we found that a few years and two new websites later there were no longer any live links to them. I found it very interesting to re-visit the views and thoughts from August 2020 and again exactly a year later so we have attached a pdf of each article here:
Some Offices are open but what does the future look like? – 2020
Back to the future, back to the office – 2021
2020 & 2021
Cast your mind back to February 2020. Concern about the possibility of a deadly virus reaching our shores was growing by the day and at Team PLG, we knew we just had to be ready. For anything. We prepped the team for homeworking and made sure that everyone had what they felt they needed to function as best they could. We closed our offices on Friday 13th March, some 10 days before Boris came on TV to tell everyone to stay at home. And everyone did! Can you imagine that now? No, nor can I.
In August 2020, it was still very much a time of trying to understand change whilst looking at how that impacted the future, and it was clear that there was still a huge amount of anxiety and uncertainty. As a team, we had returned to the office at the earliest opportunity and in the main everyone was happy to do so, albeit with some Perspex screens, a degree of social distancing and a huge amount of disinfecting products!
By August 2021, things had begun to change but not dramatically so. People were gradually returning to the workplace in some form or other, but it was clear that this was not as quickly as expected. Larger firms were having bigger problems in getting people back to their desks as the new era of homeworking had dramatically changed things like commuting costs and, in many cases, childcare costs and arrangements. It was evident that things had not got back to anything like ‘normal’ and there was some way to go before they did.
Fast Forward to 2025
So almost 4 years on from our last comments on the matter, and in the light of continued debate, not just because of media coverage, where are we now?
During that time, PLG has doubled in size against pretty much every metric, yet we still work exclusively in the office rather than any form of hybrid working, for many reasons that we explored in our previous blogs. First and foremost, we’re disabled property specialists and feel privileged to work in this space. But our leadership position demands a constant commitment to delivering innovative solutions that meet the unique needs of each and every one of our clients. We find we achieve that best through our teams working closely together in the office every day – collaborating, supporting, sharing, innovating.
However, we introduced ‘Agile Working’ a couple of years ago too. It enables our teams to start and finish the working day earlier/later, on the proviso that core hours are adhered to. This has worked really well in terms of facilitating deliveries at home and school appointments etc. whilst also ensuring that the collective decision to be office-based continues.
Within that time, I can also reflect on the fact that many of our team have come on in leaps and bounds. For example, at least 5 colleagues have gained promotion to senior roles. Other teammates have also developed rapidly and I think it is without doubt that the growth and success we’ve experienced in recent years is a direct result of being based in the office 100% of the time.
However, as businesses go, we are pretty small. It is relatively easy to create a policy when you have a staff of 25-30. But what of those businesses that employ say, 10 times as many people?
It’s clear that although 36% of businesses now require staff to be in the office 5 days a week and 80% of businesses now have a policy detailing what days their staff need to be in the office, there are many more companies that would like to do more and have been unable to achieve it. Indeed, 13% of the workforce do not go into an office at all and those that only go in 2/3 days a week have, in effect, an 8% salary rise when savings of commuting costs are taken into consideration. Clearly, these statistics demonstrate that there is still some way to go.
But, what of the wider implications of this seismic shift in working practices? In our blog of August 2021, I made the bold prediction that a huge investment of my Euromillions winnings in Commercial Office Space would be a very sound one. Fortunately for me, I didn’t win the Euromillions and make that investment as there is around 121 million sq ft of office space available today, more than double the amount of 2019.
Across the country, town and city centres have changed dramatically as ancillary businesses like bars and food establishments are closing in their droves because footfall is so dramatically down. Even TFL report that weekday travel into the capital is down by 17%, with Tuesday or Thursday now being the busiest days of the week.
So, what does the future hold?
However powerful the economic, business or social reasons for a greater degree of a return to the office, it is unlikely that we will ever see a return to the ways of working that prevailed pre-pandemic. The move to spending more time in an office environment is gradually gathering pace but it is likely that as time goes on it will become more the norm to have employees negotiating, or possibly demanding, at least one or two days a week working from home.
However, it is clear that the business and social cost of this change in working practices for businesses and employees alike will take much longer to evaluate. As things stand, as a collective, we’re very happy at PLG doing things the way we do. No doubt, we’re all in a fascinating phase of societal and economic change, but you know what they say, with great change comes great opportunity.
Phill Gill
PLG Consultants
8th July 2025
