The last year has given us a lot of different opportunities to reassess where we are in life and what we want from our surroundings. The lockdown conditions made life difficult for all of us and gave us pause and a moment to take stock. One of the biggest revelations that came to people in the UK, and indeed much of the rest of the world, was that we don’t need to be tied to the city to live the lives that we want.
An unprecedented number of people were forced to work from home, and businesses realised that we could work just as efficiently from home as we do from an office environment. This has come as welcome news to many of us as it has been well reported that living in a densely urban environment can have negative effects on your physical and mental health. This is likely to be one of the main drivers behind many people choosing to leave the city behind once and for all.
A Better Quality of Life
Many of us are happy to trade the office for our home as we can achieve a better work-life balance. The amount of time saved from commuting makes a huge difference to how we feel throughout the day, and it costs us less. A lot has been written about the stress of commuting and the negative effect on our lives. Cutting out this expensive part of your day can lead to you leading a better quality of life in the long term.
Countryside Living Options
One of the main trends in the UK since the rise of permanent home working has come from people opting to move up to Scotland for more rural surroundings. Property experts show that towns in Aberdeenshire offer a good balance of life and home options for those who want a change of scene now that their job provides that greater degree of flexibility. It’s easy to see the appeal of this type of life as you can give yourself a balance between enjoying the countryside or having a decent-sized town along the road in the form of Aberdeen.
Better for Employers
The idea of trading city life for something a little less hectic isn’t just beneficial to employees, but employers can enjoy the benefits too. There is less pressure on them to pay the expensive overheads for office space. They can also implement increasingly popular flexible working schemes amongst their employees, allowing them to get work done at a time that suits their home lifestyle. It’s pretty clear that this way of working is here to stay.
It goes without saying that the conditions of working through the pandemic of last year put a lot of unknown pressures on people in a variety of ways. If one positive can come out of it, it will be that we have a greater degree of flexibility for work-life balance, now that businesses have adopted this way of working as the “new normal”.