5 Reasons To Get Back In The Office
As the world adapts to life with Covid-19, working from home has become the new norm for many of us, and I’m sure we can all agree on the positives that come with it: the sleeping in, the frequent trips to the fridge, the pyjama days…
That being said, as restrictions lift across the UK and we are all faced with the understandable questions and anxieties surrounding going back to the office, we have to remember that there’s a reason offices have been around since the middle ages. They can be a very important part of running a successful business and do wonders for your health and lifestyle.
With more and more business centres reopening safely around the UK, we want you to feel safe in returning to your routine. So without further a do, here’s 5 reasons coming back to the office might just be the right choice for you!
1. Time Management
Those who adapted to flexible working over lockdown will have experienced the beauty of waking up a 8:45am, rolling out of bed, grabbing your laptop and casually starting the day but sadly, this neglects a key role in maintaining a successful business and professional life: Punctuality and time keeping. As much as we might hate to hear those words, they are fundamental and transferable skills to have. The structure and discipline of waking up early, preparing for the day, and getting your head in the right place is much more achievable when you are faced with travelling to the office everyday. This allows you to stop solely relying on yourself for discipline and have the benefit of others around you helping stay on track.
Work and Home Life Balance
Between the toddler ambling in every 10 minutes, the dog barking at invisible forces, and the smell of the delicious cooking coming from the kitchen, you have been trying to write the same email for about an hour. Those of us who tried our hand a working from home in over the last few months can relate to this all too well! Keeping your work life and home life separate can give you a great advantage: better prioritising skills, clearer focus, and therefore, increased productivity. Not only does this benefit your work life, but also can vastly improve things at home, giving your family the full attention they deserve, and simply viewing home as just that… home.
3. Interpersonal Skills
As much as a bit of alone time does you some good, it is also important to put your social skills into action when working in a team, with social distancing in place of course! I don’t know about you, but over lockdown my social skills plummeted, something that had once come so naturally to me, was now something I had to actively think about. It makes all the difference to put yourself into social situations when it comes to the world of business, so that when it comes down to making decisions and working as a team, you are all on the same page on the smaller steps required to reach a larger goal, and can therefore get there much faster!
4. Mental Health
A lot of mental health research points to the importance of routine and structure, which can be helped massively by simply having a reason to leave the house everyday. As much as we all like the idea of being a home all the time, it can drastically alter your life: Changing your sleeping pattern, decreasing motivation to make plans or to go outside, and even affecting your eating habits. Not to mention the social aspect, it can get incredibly lonely working alone, especially with the added complication of social distancing and the lockdown. The problem is that once you are in the habit of being alone, it has a knock on affect on the rest of your life and you find yourself struggling in other social aspects such as family life and friendships. Going back to the office may see daunting at first, but you’d be surprised by how fast everything falls back into place!
5. Creative Flow
Working around like-minded people working towards the same goal allows you to bounce off each other in a back-and-forth, adapting and improvising ideas faster and more efficiently. Anyone who has experienced the joy of video calls has most likely experienced the awkward, accidental interrupting and the quiet pauses while everybody figures out if it’s safe to talk. Of course video calling was an extremely helpful tool during the course of lockdown and helped many of us conduct business as usual, but now that more restrictions are lifting more and more each day, it’s perhaps time to adapt once again and start thinking of safe ways we can have these conversations in person again.