IN THIS ISSUE 04 What’s New A selection of the best new products for home and office 07 Bulletin The changing world of work 11 COVID-19 What the office products industry is doing to help protect key workers 12 App Update New apps for business and personal use 14 Office Design What coronavirus means for the future of the office 21 Computers The growing appeal of circular IT 22 Cover Story Moving to Cloud IT with Cloudbox 24 Management How to manage different personality types during lockdown 26 Collaboration Are we entering a new era of video-based collaboration? 27 Messaging Ashley Friedlein explains why business users should avoid consumer messaging apps 28 Video BlueJeans shares eight top tips for safer video meetings 31 Recruitment Why recruitment is the ideal candidate for virtualisation – and how to make a good impression from a distance 33 I couldn’t do my job without... Virtual Assistant extraordinaire Joanne Manville picks her favourite work tools 34 The month in numbers What research tells us about the modern workplace Editor: James Goulding 0780 308 7228 ·
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[email protected] So how has the lockdown been for you? Have you taken advantage of furlough to learn another language and hone your guitar-playing skills, or have you been working as hard as normal, just in a different location? Have the days and days spent cooped up together brought you and your partner closer or has enforced proximity caused your relationship to break down completely? Have you taken up yoga and healthy eating or turned to comfort food and heavy drinking? Have you embraced home-working and relished not having to catch the 6.35 every morning or have you struggled with the lack of structure and routine and the opportunities to socialise with colleagues? The relative ease with which many businesses have been able to operate in lockdown is testament to the efficiency and reliability of modern communications technologies – even more so when you consider that remote working in many cases has been enabled by ad hoc emergency measures rather than a purpose-built infrastructure. The indications are that once lockdown is over many more organisations will offer home- working as an option, or even a requirement, as they seek to economise and reduce the cost of city centre offices. Many employees will welcome this. In a survey by SentryBay, two out of three people who have been working at home over the last couple of months said they would like to continue to do so in the future. But what about the one in three who wouldn’t? As businesses make plans for life after lockdown, it is important not to forget those for whom home working is not ideal – because they haven’t got the space, because they haven’t got a supportive home environment, because they don’t have high speed broadband, because they need the stimulus of human interaction, because they are young and the world is their oyster. In a YouGov survey commissioned by Acas, nearly two fifths of employees working from home said that they felt stressed, anxious and, in the worst cases, experienced mental health difficulties due to their working situation. Over the coming months, employers will have the difficult task of addressing the hopes and fears of all employees many of whom are understandably afraid to re-enter the workplace. In doing so, the concerns of those who haven’t enjoyed the experience of home-working shouldn’t be ignored. James Goulding , Editor ,
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