THINGS may be a bit different when you finally get back to the office, it seems. After weeks of lockdown the UK Government is now laying out guidelines for a return to work after consulting business leaders and unions. With fears of a second wave of coronavirus, the measures suggested will lead to major changes in the workplace.

What kind of measures can we expect?

According to proposals put forward by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, we can forget about hot desking and face-to-face meetings and instead look forward to staggered shift times and social distancing within the working environment. Including in the lifts. Oh, and do not even think about borrowing someone’s pen.

Is it safe to even travel to the office, though?

It’s a fair question, given that there are fears of the danger of public transport being a vector for the disease. The truth is that for many of us home working may well continue for some time ahead.

What if you do not work in an office?

When shops reopen there will be the introduction of the same social distancing measures we are currently seeing in supermarkets. Meanwhile, deep cleaning of working environments will need to become the norm. Tradesmen such as plumbers will have to build it into their working practice.

But we will eventually get back to normal, won’t we?

Not necessarily. And certainly not before a vaccine is discovered.

And, even then, the future of the workplace is possibly a fluid concept from this point forward. If companies have found their staff work productively at home will they see it as an opportunity to forego expensive office space?

And if they do not go that far, there is still the possibility that open-plan offices may become a thing of the past. And never mind about hot desking, desks have been  shrinking in offices in recent years. That might need to change.

And how long before measures to reduce the need to touch surfaces in public buildings is introduced? Do you really want to flush the toilet or turn the tap on in a building when you don’t know who touched it last?

This all sounds serious … And expensive.

Indeed. And maybe therein lies a cautionary note. Epidemics can sometimes lead to major changes in society. Cholera in the 19th century helped lead to the introduction of both a sewage system and the modern street grid after all. But those changes tend to happen only when an epidemic is recurrent. If it is a one-off pandemic, as with the 2003 Sars outbreak, there is less pressure for widescale change.

At the moment we cannot know how coronavirus will change society in the long-term. It depends on how virulent and how persistent it continues to be. If it’s both, we might find that the way we work will change dramatically in the coming years.