It’s been a busy few months here. Helping clients communicate through the most bizarre business environment I’ve worked in during my 25-year-plus career.

But we’ve done it, and continue to do so: because this is now the new normal.

So what does working in the new normal look like?

• No commute
• Working from home
• Video conferencing meetings
• Managing family life in tandem

And actually, it’s rather good. More importantly, it works. As many businesses have found.

For those employers and employees that were slow to embrace homeworking – putting it in the too difficult/rather not box – it’s been an epiphany. Not only has the technology enabled it to happen, but culturally people have moved on too.

A recent survey revealed that the majority of office workers have no desire to return to their old way of working. With 57% not wanting to go back to a normal office environment with normal office hours. And 45% of business leaders see the working environment changing for the better.

Many companies are also looking at downsizing their office space as fewer staff will be using them. And some, including leading law firm Slater & Gordon, are planning to scrap their office presence altogether. Radical!

Much of this would have been unheard of prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. And if it was in discussion, the inevitable bureaucracy than exists in the larger firms where these decisions were being made would mean it would take months to agree, sign-off and happen.

Instead, back in March Boris Johnson said work from home if you can, and within days everyone who could did, and still are.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but, as I have found throughout my career, there’s nothing like a crisis to focus the mind.