For many workers, the office they return to after the coronavirus pandemic will look a little different.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
If they have an office at all.
Kelly Lofberg is one of many business owners and executives who has changed her perspective of the optimal workplace after months of lockdown.
The Mara Consulting founder and managing director all but closed her office in King Street in March and sent her employees home to work.
Ten days ago, the lease ran out and she did not renew it.
"We've actually closed our office for the foreseeable future," Ms Lofberg said.
"We've got a team of 12, so when lockdown happened we moved everyone pretty quickly to a home-work environment. The guys have taken to it really well, and I've chosen not to renew the lease. We'll work from home for the foreseeable future until things calm down.
"As long as the guys get to leave their houses and are not stuck at home with the kids all the time we can be far more flexible."
The Mara office was costing Ms Lofberg $5500 in rent and $1000 in running costs a month, helping make the decision to close "quite easy".
"Because we're all going through it there's no stigma attached from our clients that you don't have a permanent office space," she said.
But she planned to lease another space, possibly by the end of the year, because her employees and clients wanted social interaction.
"But what the new model looks like when we do have a new office is going to be far more flexible. Where I was looking for a bigger office space to grow, I think being able to work from clients' offices, or from home or the coffee shop, if that's what people prefer, then come into the office when they need to I think will work for us.
"The team's been really innovative and adapted really well. It's forced us to adapt to a new model.
"One team member starts work before the kids get up."
Her employees' daily work-from-home routine includes a video check-in.
"If we're working on a project together, we might be on the video conference and have each other on one screen, even if we're not talking to each other.
"I do like being able to see people and communicating, not just relying on emails and things like that. The mobile is ringing far less, and I'm getting far more video calls, which is really nice."
Mara's communications and engagement leader, Kate Baartz, said she and her husband and their 10-year-old son had learnt to work and study in the close confines of their two-bedroom New Lambton house.
"When we were all working from home we had to find our separate corners," she told the Newcastle Herald as son Robbie watched Dude Perfect videos in the background.
"It can be a challenge because you're all on top of each other all the time, trying to have a very serious teleconference with important people and in the background you've got handball going on, or a Nerf war."
Ms Baartz said she would not rule out working from home permanently, but she missed having social contact with colleagues.
"I'm a very people person, so just that everyday interaction. I'm just trying to keep that human touch with everyone. I have lots of check-ins during the day because everyone's in the same situation."
IN OTHER NEWS:
She said being able to drop off and pick up Robbie from school and the absence of interruptions were positives of home work.
Businesses large and small have long been weighing up the pros and cons of flexible staff arrangements such as working from home.
Three months into the coronavirus forced experiment, Hunter business leaders said they had learned valuable lessons about what did and didn't work.
"I think, in a historical perspective, working from home was often demonised. Working from home tended to fragment that teamwork in an office," Hunter Business Chamber boss Bob Hawes said.
"I think there was some fear. No one likes being a pioneer, and, until you try it, you don't know.
"Now we've been forced to try it, we're certainly seeing some workplaces where it's a bit of a revelation where they're able to successfully manage productivity and their team."
Greater Bank chief executive officer Scott Morgan said his company had about 300 of 350 corporate office staff working from home with little negative impact on productivity.
But, in his own experience, setting up to work from home was not ideal for everyone.
"At times it can be a challenge, especially people with children," he said.
"I have a four-year-old daughter, and sometimes she just doesn't understand why Dad's home and he can't be with her."
Colliers International's Newcastle director in charge, Peter Macadam, agreed.
"It comes down to the family unit. If you've got small kids, you're not getting clear head space to be able to work productively for a long stint," he said. "They don't understand. They just see that you're home.
"Then, if people don't have a dedicated room where people can go and lock themselves in and pretend you're not there."
Mr Macadam was also dubious of the value of video conferencing, especially for larger meetings.
"My experience has been, if I've got a meeting with four people, say, and you do that on a video conference, then that's fine, it works really well. But, if there's 10 people or more, it's impossible. People are on mute and you can see them talking and you're going, 'You're on mute.'
"Everyone's trying to talk at the same time and there's no connection."
But both executives said work-from-home was "on everyone's radar" in the corporate world.
"The really big driver is to give people the opportunity to work the way that suits them, especially from the perspective of trying to win and retain really good talent," Mr Morgan said.
"Do I see a point where suddenly 300 of 350 are working remotely? Certainly not. But I've got my contact centre working across 40 different locations at the moment and it's working well."
Mr Macadam said he knew of two commercial office tenants who had reduced their space requirements while staff stayed home, and the company had fielded interest from outside corporations who were keen on setting up at least part of their operations in Newcastle.
He said the pandemic might have taught companies that they could fragment their operations in cheaper cities like Newcastle without affecting productivity.
Hunter property developer and builder Hilton Grugeon predicted work-from-home could soften demand in the commercial property market.
"When we turn around one day and say, 'Next Monday you can all come back to work,' a lot of them are going to say they're better off working from home," he said.
"A lot of businesses can reduce the amount of office space they need. It saves the time and cost of getting to and from work, and their productivity can actually be enhanced."
Mr Hawes cautioned that some seemingly positive new work practices might not survive once they were no longer necessary.
"This is the gloss of the new at the moment," he said. "Everyone's working to make sure it does work because it has to. In an environment where it's discretionary, I think generally speaking just human behaviour is the response is different. People are more questioning, and you'd have to cover off those problems as they arise."
He said it was important that companies did not shift office costs on to staff working from home.
"There hasn't been a lot of data about what it does to your power and your data costs, and what other costs come up, because it wasn't widespread across large organisations who are now experimenting with it."
Hunter Workers secretary Daniel Wallace agreed and suggested the Tax Office should introduce a flat $150-a-week deduction for people working from home.
Newcastle Permanent chief executive officer Bernadette Inglis, who has almost 1000 staff, said enforced isolation had accelerated change in the company.
"What struck me was that this experiment or this environment has meant that we have used the facilities that we already had but in the past hadn't explored them as much as we could," she said.
The coronavirus has led to a large increase in cashless transactions, forcing companies like the Perm to shift staff into those areas.
"The transactions in our branches have gone down a little, but the transaction volumes in our call centre and in online banking have gone up, call centre a fair bit, online banking astronomically," Ms Inglis said.
"We've been retraining people to go into new roles. One of the enduring things, our people have more career options."
She agreed that productivity had not been greatly affected and work-from-home could be a means to retain good employees.
"What we have found is our people really enjoy having the option to work from home. Because we have staggered hours, they get more options to choose the hours they work from home."
Other industries have also found new ways of working with staff and customers.
McDonald Jones Homes director Andrew Helmers said the company had developed an app for staff to monitor quality control and added features during the pandemic to check on employees' "health metrics" at the start of every work day.
"These new features will also be adapted post COVID-19," he said. "Coming out of the COVID-19 crisis we will have learnt a lot, adapted and adjusted quickly to a changing environment."
The home builder would also continue online tools such as live chats and zoom meetings between customers and consultants which it had introduced during lockdown.