Will COVID-19 change the way we work … forever?

As the firm-wide director of consulting for global design and architectural company HOK, Adam Stoltz has spent much of his 15 years in the industry thinking about the ways in which people work. Today, that means pondering how the COVID-19 pandemic might forever change our offices and workdays. REjournals recently spoke with Stoltz, who is based in HOK’s New York City office, about the long-term changes that the pandemic, and the country’s response to it, might have on the world of work. Let’s start with the obvious question: Now that so many employees are working from home, will we see more remote working even after the threat of COVID-19 fades? Adam Stoltz: A lot of companies are facing the reality that they had perhaps been resisting of enabling employees to work more remotely or more flexibly. They have been forced into it today and now realize that it is certainly possible. For some companies and employees, working from home is working well. For others, while it might be working fairly well from a business standpoint, it’s not actually working from a personal standpoint, from that individual’s standpoint. Some companies will look at this situation and tell their employees, ‘This is working out better than we thought. Guess what? You are now going to work remotely or work remotely more often.’ It’s important for companies to realize, though, that working remotely might not be working for individuals for a variety of reasons. Companies will have to balance what works for them as a business and what works for their employees as individuals. Click to read more at www.rejournals.com.