Microsoft Ireland anticipates that 50% of the country’s professionals will never return to the office full-time, following a study conducted by Boston Consulting Group and KRC Research. 

Microsoft is one of a number of large companies in Dublin who have told employees they can continue to work from home ‘forever’, subject to managerial approval, reports Ireland’s Independent. 

So what? 

Companies and organisations have a significant opportunity to use the shift to remote working as a springboard to reinvent their working culture. This is essential to enable the ‘Transform’ trajectory identified as the optimum way forward in Forum for the Future’s report, prioritising building societal resilience through regenerative strategies over profit. 

As Aisling Curtis, commercial director with Microsoft Ireland, told the Irish Times: “Almost every business leader [in the study] cited the importance of changing their organisation’s way of working to become innovative and flexible”, turning a working model that dates back 200 years on its head. 

The potential benefits of an innovation-friendly working culture for businesses and employees are enticing – to name just a few: 

• higher levels of innovation as fear of failure subsides and experiments take off
• lower turnover due to greater levels of personal connection with the mission
• lower rates of stress, anxiety and burnout due to a culture that prioritises long-term wellbeing.

But the greatest prize could be for society as a whole, with increased capacity for systemic transformation.