Anecdotally, it might look like the ‘return to the office’ has begun in earnest. Walk past buildings that have lain empty for almost two years and see occupied desks, notice the busier morning buses and trains, join a lunchtime coffee shop queue and it’s easy to conclude that we’re heading ‘back to normal’.

It is extraordinary how the labour market has been transformed over the past eighteen months. In the US - regarded as a bellwether for workplace trends - the switch has been beyond dramatic, going from an 80-year peak jobless rate just before the pandemic to what’s been called “The Great Resignation’, in which 4.3 million workers voluntarily quit their jobs in just one month, September 2021.

No-one knows what the post-pandemic workplace is going to be like, but that fact hasn’t stemmed the flood of predictions, opinions and pronouncements on the subject.

Is my city dying? Will my city-centre workplace disappear? Will I end up working in the suburbs? Or is this an opportunity to reinvent the workplace for a new era?

Do I still want to be in an office? It might be good for the business; what about me? Maybe try designing it for people like me that work there?

Can’t I just work from home? I don’t need a commute, packed tubes and trains, overpriced coffees and lunches. Can the office become somewhere I actually want to be?

It's hard to imagine as we sit in our makeshift home offices, that relatively soon we will need to return to our workplaces.

As office designers, the question of how will we return to work and what this will look like has been intriguing us.

Having spent the last twenty odd years designing and fabricating furniture for our clients, we’ve decided this is the year to put all that R&D into creating our own Jackdaw furniture range.

Cycling is a big part of our lives at Jackdaw. Not just for transport, but we have a curious obsession with the humble bicycle and not a day goes by that we’re not hopping on to the saddle and heading out for a ride.