Look Beyond the Nook

Is your home office falling short of productivity? Look beyond your nook. While home designs and styles have included iterations of home offices over the past century, chances are that your home was never designed for you to work from it full time. Take, for example, Mike Brady. His sunken 70’s wood-paneled man-den was more than he probably needed, given he still went to his office to work every day. Home offices are meant for just that; An office for when you are home and need to get some work done. Most are not intended to be utilized as a 9-5 pm be-all-end-all office space with your family as officemates. What about homes where there is no extra room or intentionally designed home office space? Sure you can get your Pinterest on and craft yourself the most darling little alcove or finish off that basement you’ve been meaning to anyway and create something from nothing. But at the end of the day, you may have spent more time fashioning the office than actually working from it.

Productivity is different for everyone. For some, sitting off to a corner of your kitchen or living room might be all you need but for those who need a little quiet dedicated space, working from home might have you altering your work schedule to fit around the rest of the household. Many companies report higher productivity from their work from home employees and there are clear benefits when it comes to travel and commute time saved. With no commute, there is more time to work adding on as much as 2 hours a day for some workers. For employees who were typically traveling for meetings halfway across the country, rolling out of bed and into Zoom is a lot swifter than a flight, connecting flight, and taxi to your meeting. But this newfound extra time will lose the shiny eventually and become the new normal as many workers are choosing to stay home as a long term solution to the pandemic and beyond. There are also consequences of the continued work from home movement. Employees are noting feelings of detachment from their teams and workmates and reports of higher anxiety. This could definitely impede productivity after a certain point.

The home office, we predict, will be one of the biggest trends of new home construction in a post-pandemic world. But for those of you who don’t have the right set-up for your work needs at home and aren’t in the market to buy a new home, don’t panic. Workspace offers private furnished offices close to home so you don’t have to sacrifice productivity for safety or your place in an office community.