Commuting issues contribute to working from home eagerness

The horrible experience of commuting is encouraging people to turn to garden offices, shedworking, and working from home in general, according to two new studies.

Nearly half of 500 UK workers surveyed by Citrix said they intend to stay away from 'traditional' offices because of the high cost of transport to and from them, comparable to figures in studies of United States, Australia and France.

"Employees have learned they can engage and be just as productive working from home," said Traci Palmer of Citrix, "and as fuel prices continue to increase, they are questioning whether the benefits of being in the office outweigh the time and money associated with commuting. The key to keeping employees engaged and productive lies in creating work-from-anywhere experiences that are seamless, fuel connection and collaboration, and empower people to do their best work, regardless of their location."

Meanwhile a worldwide study of more than 12,000 employees from Tracking Happiness shows that being able to work remotely is closely linked to happiness at work, raising happiness levels by up to 20%, especially for Millennials, with employee happiness decreasing as commute times increase.. Conversely, returning to office-based work after the pandemic seems to have reduced employee happiness.

Hugo Huijer, founder of Tracking Happiness said: "Our study shows that employees that have the ability to work from home are happier than those that don’t. On top of this finding, we saw a strong negative correlation between commute times and employee happiness.

"In that sense, companies can improve employee happiness by simply allowing them to work from home more. Not only does this benefit the environmental footprint of your company, it also helps improve employee morale. On top of that, studies have proven again and again that employee happiness is linked to productivity and job performance.

"Having your employees work from an office might make sense in the short term. But if it results in employee unhappiness, it can result in a drop in sustainability and performance that can be far more severe than an empty office building."

Image courtesy  Eden Garden Rooms

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Welcome to your new teak garden room from Moonalabs. Unparalleled quality at an affordable price.

 

Food sheds in the new Idler

 

The latest issue of the Idler magazine is now out (or has 'dropped' if you prefer that term). As always it features my regular column on garden offices, sheds, and microarchitecture in general. This time out I look at builds with a food angle - pictured above - featuring Arctic Cabins, Plankbridge, and Dawn Fry's The Melting Pot. I'm afraid those of you who also enjoyed my snooker column will be disappointed as I've decided to call time on that after four years of exhausting the subject.

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Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

Shepherd's hut home office

Cornwall-based, family-run Timeless Spaces specialises in shepherds' huts (though also provides other bespoke shedlike structures). Here's a nice example of their work for a couple who moved from London down to Cornwall and needed an extra garden office space. It's in a tricky position - in a small area above their new home's large extension and at the bottom of a steeply sloping garden. This required parts of the hut to be built in the workshop and then assembled on site. Below is a rather nice video which shows off what a beautiful spot it is in which to work.

How Did A Shepherd Hut Get There? from Kelly on Vimeo.

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

 

Shed switch

I love this from The Play Shed. Apart from the classically simple design, it also means the light in the shed can be switched on and off remotely. For those more technically knowledgeable than the Shedworking staff it is coded in Arduino on a esp8266 and uses iffft to send the command to a hive switch.

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Wednesday’s posts are sponsored by Norwegian Log Buildings  - Log cabins and garden buildings for a better quality of life. Click here for more details.

Garden office for two people

While most shedworkers are alone in their garden offices most of the time, some builds require a bigger spec. Here is an Oeco Garden Rooms 8m x 4m in Surrey which also has a large timber deck. The commission was for a large home office large enough so that two people could work both comfortably and independently, so the interior space is chopped into two rooms with a door between them. Each also has its own access from the deck via double patio doors. On the outside is our old cladding friend western red cedar.

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  Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of                     contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of 

  which do not require planning

 

Unusual-shaped garden office

Here's a really intriguing build from Mark Burton at Tiny House Cabins with a rear section unlike any we've ever seen before. This is what Mark says about it:

No, your eyes do not deceive you, this is the actual shape of the back of this custom built cabin. It's surprising how many people have a seemingly unusable point to the end of the garden and would struggle to find anything standard on the market to fill the gap. This is the beauty of our service, we can make use of even the most awkward spaces. This large cabin is fully insulated using pressure treated timbers to both sides, Elm Waney Edge cladding to the front and a full GRP roof.

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Monday posts are sponsored by Eden Garden Rooms. Stunning, bespoke high quality garden rooms, to suit your unique space and style

 

Tips for building a garden office

We're not generally fans of lists of garden office tips - usually they're not helpful and full of drivellingly obvious suggestions. But the Shedworking staff quite like this one from Ideal Home. Some useful brief thoughts on planting, viewpoints, and things like repurposing a side return as pictured in the Green Retreats build above.

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Sunday posts are sponsored by Henshalls Insurance, specialists in insuring garden offices and other garden buildings. Click here for more information.