Trying to navigate the working landscape right now can feel like a game of luck. Perhaps your company has suggested hybrid working, but you’re not sure what days you should go into the office – or whether you want to at all. Maybe you’re stuck in a job that’s demanding you return full-time, an idea that leaves you cold after 18 months of enjoying the perks of working from home, with dreaded commutes replaced by leisurely mornings and more time for yourself.

You might be in an industry that’s never had the luxury of remote work, something you once took as a given but are now starting to rail against. Whatever your situation, your head is likely spinning with what your next move will be, and what impact it might have on your career and life.

And you’re right to feel confused: not since the Industrial Revolution has our daily status quo been so thoroughly dismantled. Now, though, we have a chance to rebuild.

In the pre-pandemic world, millions of us spent a third of our lives in a workplace, churning out projects between set hours under the watchful eye of a boss, assuming that’s how it would always be. But the first lockdown announcement in March 2020 changed everything; the number of us working from home doubled to 46.6% practically overnight.

Over the next 18 months, employers and employees alike would spend a lot of time – mostly in jogging bottoms at makeshift desks – rethinking what the future world of work might look like. 

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Image credit: Dan Saelinger/Trunk Archive