In 2021 I wrote a series of scenarios looking at the long-term impact of Covid on how and where people will be working from in 2025. And so now 2025 is here, I’m revisiting the scenarios to assess what they got right, what they got wrong, and perhaps most importantly, what was missed.
“None of these scenarios were ever going to be true, but they may all contain elements of the truth.“
Before we jump into the analysis, it’s important to remember the objective of scenario planning is not to predict the future. The goal is to explore the space of ‘possible futures’ so people can be better prepared for whatever comes next.
The additional value of scenario planning is the focus they create. The time and effort spent investigating, writing and producing them makes you hyper-aware of signals in the environment related to the scenarios you’ve developed. As a result, since writing these in 2021, I’ve been following along, collecting signals, analysing the underlying drivers, trying to understand which way the future will unfold.
The future hasn’t been settled (yet)
What I’ve found most interesting about these scenarios is that the future is still unclear. Despite significant effort from powerful forces, the future of where we will work feels unresolved. Many large employers tried to establish return-to-office mandates with varying levels of success. The federal opposition even briefly made returning to the office an election policy before backing down in the face of public opposition. It feels like there is still a strong undercurrent of wanting people to return to offices, and yet many still enjoy flexible work arrangements.
The risk of limbo
Although a lot of workers are back in the offices two or three days mid-week, this feels more like a compromise rather than a strategy. I think a lack of clarity has meant that many organisations are still operating in a state of limbo and are yet to approach working arrangements in a thoughtful way.
As a futurist, I’d say the best strategy in the face of uncertainty is to maintain flexibility. This means rather than talk about work from home or return to the office, we should be talking about work from where it makes sense. The last few years have shown there are valuable aspects of being colocated with other human beings. These include developing shared understanding, building connection and belonging, and enabling the subtleties of non-verbal communication. But all too often, forcing co-location appears to be instigated to address a failing of culture, leadership or management.
Sadly, I’ve struggled to find many examples of organisations approaching this challenge in really intentional ways. For the last few years, I’ve questioned leaders about what they might do in the office if they couldn’t bring their laptops with them. The answers to this question are as elusive now as they were back in 2021.
What the scenarios got right
Collaboration technologies
Although the rapid improvement in these technologies has now slowed, they are now deeply ingrained in organisations. Prior to the pandemic, enterprise social tools such as Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams were poorly understood and under-utilised, and over the last few years, they have become near ubiquitous.
The four-day work week
Although not yet commonplace, there are a growing number of signals concerning the four-day work week. This is in part driven by a post-pandemic focus on work-life balance but has been accelerated by conversations about the impact of AI on the workplace (more on that below).
Economic collapse
The economic collapse that underpins this scenario is yet to happen (but still might). We have seen culture in many organisations suffer as they’ve struggled to adapt to a distributed workforce, and this has been the rationale behind many of the return-to-office mandates that we’ve seen.
What was underestimated
The endurance of return-to-office mandates
In the scenarios, the return-to-office mandates were driven by economic collapse. In reality, these mandates have endured even without a significant economic downturn. One reason for this might have been underestimating the influence of the commercial property sector, who have openly admitted to lobbying the NSW Government on return-to-office mandates.
The scale of the AI disruption on knowledge work
Although generative AI is still in its infancy and its full impacts are unknown, the weak signals for generative AI were already there in 2021. Over the next five years or so, we are likely to see a greater impact of AI on questions of where we work from, but these changes haven’t necessarily materialised yet. If generative AI-type technologies continue to encroach on screen-based, online work, then we may see a shift to in-person work to leverage our ‘human-ness’ and to reinforce trust.
Mental health and burnout becoming strategic issues
Part of the enduring nature of flexible work arrangements has been the mental health concerns that emerged during the pandemic but that have also been exacerbated by the uncertainty over the last few years. For many, flexible work has become non-negotiable as they seek to maintain their mental health and, subsequently, better work-life balance.
If you’ve taken away something different from these scenarios, I’d love to hear it. The picture is still evolving, and we’re all seeing different signals depending on where we sit.
I’ll be back with the final part of this series in the next couple of weeks, where we’ll shift focus to what’s next — asking new questions for 2025 and beyond, and exploring some of the emerging drivers that are set to shape the future of flexible work.
Simon
