London Inc. Spring 2021 - 33

Enterprise

The rise, fall
and rise of the
home office
No matter what back to in-ofﬁce
work looks like, the home ofﬁce
has once again become a coveted
feature of modern living
by BY KIERAN DELAMONT

THERE IS A lot we still don't yet know about the office of
the near future, the one many employees may return to
over the next few years - how safe it will be, how much
time anyone will spend there and even how necessary
it is at all - remain open questions.
However those questions are answered, Rodney
Lover, dealer principal at Lovers atWork Office
Furniture, sees the return of the home office as an
inevitability.
" The last year has certainly legitimized people
working at home, " he says. " But even if we double or
triple the number of people that
work from home, that's still only
about 15 per cent of the population.
People will go back to the office,
but there's going to be a lot more
people working from home and
feeling like they're legitimate. "
Perhaps this is nothing new to
you - for much of the last year,
after all, we've heard pronouncements (both triumphant and nervous) that the age of
the office is coming to an end. But for Lover, the real
question isn't whether the office stays or goes, but how
both home offices and workplace offices are changing.
The home office is undergoing something of a renaissance, Lover says. The rise of laptop computers in the
early 2000s did a lot to kill off the idea of a dedicated
office in the home - a set-apart space might seem point-

less when your laptop offers so much portability.
" It kind of went away because laptops could be used
at the couch, " Lover says. " [But now] people are trying
to ﬁgure out, 'How much space do I have? Can I make
a little bit of a larger work area? Can I ﬁt a couple more
people?' People are going to dedicate a room again. "
Throughout the pandemic, Lovers atWork has been
outﬁtting new home offices, so he's witnessed ﬁrsthand
trend to bring some of the familiar office signiﬁers - an
ergonomic chair, standing desks and so on - into the
home.

" I REMEMBER A TIME WHEN THE HOME
OFFICE WAS CONSIDERED THE POOR
MAN'S OPTION, " LOVER RE-CALLS. " NOW,
PEOPLE FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE ARE
REALLY CONSIDERING IT " -Rodney Lover
But Lover doesn't think that Covid will mark the
beginning of the end for the traditional office. Rather,
he predicts that the markets for both home and
commercial offices will start to move towards each
other. As remote work becomes more common (even if
it's only part-time), he thinks people will want to have
a sense of continuity. Working from home has certainly
been made more office-y over the past year, but now he

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London Inc. Spring 2021

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