Personalized Work Environment

Elevating Your Home Office for the New WFH Reality

- Dave Adams

Over the past year, COVID-19 has caused many hardships around the world. But for better or worse, the mandated lockdowns and quarantines had most Americans shifting their focus back on home life, and subsequently, on home decor. Even with some public spaces and corporate offices slowly opening again, most of us are still in a quasi-holding pattern until the vaccine is widely available and administered. So with good reason, our homes have become our dominant places of living, working, entertaining, and relaxing.

Early in the pandemic, the most immediate and dramatic shiftwas in the need for home office spaces to meet the sudden demand for work-from-home (WFH) and remote learning environments. Even post-pandemic, the way that people work will likely shift, and there's no sign that they'll be returning to the old way of doing business anytime soon. In fact, according to Upwork’s “Future of Workforce Pulse Report” (released in December 2020), 1 in 4 Americans will continue to work from home in 2021, which is an 87% increase from pre-pandemic levels.

Also, various news reports show that large companies such as Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft, and others will make some WFH positions long-term or even permanent. WFH has forced people to evaluate their home office spaces, or lack thereof. In recent months, the key to working from home for many has been creativity and creating workspaces where there was no space.