Who will be first to take advantage of the changes sweeping through the inner city?
If one thing is becoming clear as we gradually emerge from the pandemic, it’s that the world of work is not going to go back to the way it was. The evidence is Increasingly apparent in countries with functional and dynamic labor markets, and points to a growing number of workers who, while not seeking to work permanently from home, want greater the kind of flexibility that was unimaginable before the pandemic, and which increasingly takes the form of three-day weeks with flexible schedules, and similar arrangements.
But for many traditional companies, this seems an impossible leap: before the pandemic, they were at best envisioning the possibility of reduced hours or, in some cases, four-day weeks. Now, after a kind of hazy time warp that is already entering its third year, they find themselves with certain employees demanding total teleworking agreements or talking about a three-day week, something that the classic middle manager with a micromanagement vocation finds impossible to imagine.
For companies, this means major changes. Offices are being redesigned more and more aggressively, but they do so on the basis of ideas rooted in what used to be called “the third place”, between the home and the classic office: libraries, campuses, cafeterias and coworking spaces.
