What will remote working mean for commercial property post COVID-19?
The move to remote working could be an accelerant of change for companies moving their employees into cloud-based systems and away from offices.
Many companies were now being forced to introduce remote working for their staff who were in isolation at home, a change they may not have introduced without the threat of COVID-19. This also applied to schools and universities which were implementing online learning.
There were now questions over whether this would continue in the future now that the options had been put in place and tested and what this would mean for the office market.
Richard Clode, portfolio manager on the global technology team at Janus Henderson Investors, said: “While COVID-19 is a unique event that we have not witnessed before, we can say with confidence based on prior shocks that such events tend to be accelerator of change.
“Even when life returns to some semblance of normality, many of these new behaviours will stick and technology is on the right side of these shifts. Enterprises have had to substantially increase their bandwidth and computing power to enable split or full working from home on a scale not envisaged prior to the pandemic.
“We expect remote working to remain much more prevalent post-pandemic and for companies to retain this upscaled capacity.”
But Luke Briscoe, AMP Capital managing director of office and logistics, said they expected the office market would remain resilient post-pandemic as people liked the social benefits to meeting in person.
“The overwhelming feedback is that, while the situation has proven we have the technology to work remotely, the teams are craving social interaction and the support and productivity of working with their collegues.
“With many people working remotely, the phone call count has skyrocketed, making the working day less productive and limiting the opportunity to find some balance.
“These trends provide me with further confidence that the office environment will remain central to business success.”
As well as technology used for remote working, Clode said there were technology opportunities in stocks such as Netflix, online gaming, online food delivery and cloud computing.
“Online game usage surged during the China lockdown, online food delivery is stronger in Europe, e-commerce is struggling to keep up with unprecedented demand while the cancellation of sports, cinema and other entertainment is driving us home to binge another boxset on Netflix,” he said.
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
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