III.
                                   Flexibility is the new great workplace divide
    The outlines of the post-pandemic regime are becoming visible. A year has passed since
many developed economies locked down and office workers, like Bartleby, started to toil from
home. This was a plague that launched a thousand forecasts, with pundits predicting everything
from a revolution in working lives to an eventual return to normal.
    Some of these predictions are already being tested. The crisis has accelerated existing
trends, such as the move from cash to digital payments. Delivery driving will, as many people
foretold, be a big source of jobs, at least until the arrival of self-driving lorries. Bricks-and-
mortar shops will not. Despite the talk of remote working, many sectors, from construction and
manufacturing to emergency services, will still bring their workers into a central location.
    If this column has focused on offices this past year, it is because that is where the room
for debate is greatest. But at least one prediction can be firmed up. A hybrid system, in which
employees are in the office for part of the week, is here to stay. In a new report for Demos, a
British think-tank, Julia Hobsbawm writes of the “nowhere office”, both virtual and physical.
Employees will move between home, the coffee shop and a co-working space. This approach
would reduce social isolation while saving employees the grind of the daily commute. A recent
report by McKinsey, a consultancy, estimated that 20-25% of workers in the rich world could
work from home three to five days a week. That is four times more people working remotely
than before the pandemic.
    Just as technology brought workers into the factory in the 19th century, technology lets
employees disperse from the office in the 21st. There is no longer a need to pass around pieces
of paper under the watchful eye of a supervisor. And the pandemic has shown employers that
working at home can be productive. Employees like it too； a recent survey of employees at
various firms by Microsoft, a software giant, showed that 73% enjoyed the flexibility brought
by remote working.
    This shift may be self-perpetuating. If employees are coming in less often, firms will
adopt hot-desking as the best use of office space. The McKinsey report suggests employers are
planning to downsize their offices by 30%. Some will welcome the chance to trumpet the
resulting reduction in their carbon footprint. But hot-desking also reduces the scope for
workplace friendships. If so, employees will have even less incentive to go to the office five
days a week—leading to even smaller offices with more hot-desking, and so on.
    Being away from the office has downsides. It can cause stress and isolation. Gartner, a
research firm, has found that 29% of employees had felt depressed because of the pandemic. In
the long run cooperation may be harder to maintain. Individual musicians may play their
instruments beautifully but unless they are coordinated, they are no orchestra. The longer the
separation, the likelier colleagues are to play out of sync. And the lack of team spirit may reduce
workers’ commitment to their employer； the Microsoft survey found that 41% of workers were
considering leaving their job in the next 12 months.
    If the hybrid model is nevertheless here to stay, that may be because it, too, reinforces
existing trends. First, many employees were “working from home” before covid-19, answering
emails and phone calls at night and on weekends. Lockdowns have further blurred the
distinction between work and leisure. In a study by the Royal Society of Public Health 56% of
employees said they found it harder to switch off when working remotely. And a survey by the
Chartered Institute of Personnel Development found that 30% of British employees felt they
worked more hours at home.
    The hybrid model may speed up another trend—the divide between white-collar workers
who get to exercise flexibility and the much larger group of service-sector employees who have
flexibility imposed on them in the form of zero-hours contracts. As Ms Hobsbawm points out,
people’s desire as employees to exercise control over their working hours is in conflict with
their desire as consumers to have access to goods and services round the clock. Someone has
to work the unpopular shifts. Some will spend their days on slack； more will have to take up
the slack.
    And that leads to one more prediction. The pandemic will destroy the idea of a uniform
work week, 9 to 5 from Monday to Friday. Get ready to ask people you meet not “where do you
work?” but “when do you work?”
【題組】46. What is the main idea of this article?
(A) Illustrate the demise of the traditional office.[!--empirenews.page--]
(B) Share data examining the differences between working remotely and working in theoffice.
(C) Argue that remote and hybrid work is not only beneficial, but also has some downsides.
(D) Inform readers about the future of work in the office.