MILLIONS of office workers in the UK will have reached or will be nearing a milestone that most will never have imagined achieving – a year of working from home.

While in the most part office-based businesses have been able to maintain operations from kitchens, lounges and spare bedrooms, such is the technology we now have at our fingertips, there would seem to be a growing desire among people to get back to their traditional places of work.

That feeling has been evident in comments made in recent days and weeks by Scottish business leaders and company owners, though it must be emphasised that such people are only advocating a return to office life when it is safe to do so.

The rapid progress of the vaccination programme has given confidence that something approaching ‘normal’ life may be within reach sooner than many of us dared hope. With that has come a groundswell of opinion within business that people will be heading back to work in offices in towns and city centres in the coming months as lockdown is eased.

That confidence appears to be in abundance at Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank giant, which according to a report in The Times has told its 41,000 employees that they are likely to be back in the office by the end of the summer.

It is a far cry from early in the pandemic, when there were many who genuinely believed the office had had its day.

One company boss who recently said he is looking forward to getting colleagues back to the office is Stephen Bird, chief executive of Edinburgh-based investment giant Standard Life Aberdeen.

Mr Bird suggested offices were important not just for the operation of individual businesses but for the economic ecosystems they are based in. His comments may provide encouragement for those charged with revitalising town and city centres ravaged by the fallout from coronavirus.

“Offices are essential,” Mr Bird said when asked during a recent media call if the company had been reviewing its office footprint. “Offices are the hubs of activity and restaurants and the locus of socialisation and meetings; [the] fast exchange of ideas and brainstorming. All of that stuff is essential. We are not going to change the world by deciding to be entirely tethered to our sofas.”

But a return to the office will not necessarily mean that we will simply pick up where we left off before the pandemic.

A year of working from home has awakened many of us to the benefits of spending more time in the domestic environment. There have been more hours spent with loved ones, and less outlay on commuting (not to mention the stress that comes with that), though it must be acknowledged that lockdown conditions have put many families under severe pressure.

Many people will be reluctant to give up the benefits of working from home, and therefore it is no surprise to hear employers are moving towards a blended approach, as employees look to split their working weeks between the office and the house.

Betsy Williamson, founder of Core-Asset Consulting, the Edinburgh-based financial services recruitment firm, said the “vast majority” of her staff are in favour of such a split.

“We think, from the staff surveys we have done so far, that it is probably going to end up with three days at work and two days at home,” Ms Williamson told The Herald. “A hybrid model seems to be the way we are going to go. I personally would prefer that everybody is vaccinated before they come back to work but I don’t know whether that is going to be something that is achievable before the Government make these decisions.”

Mr Bird said Standard Life Aberdeen was preparing for “hybrid working” by creating collaboration zones at its headquarters on St Andrew Square in Edinburgh, having also overseen an “extreme makeover” at its office in London.

But while hybrid models could benefit employers and staff, it could also result in a glut of offices becoming vacant, should businesses decide they require less physical space. Such an outcome would make the task of regenerating our urban centres all the more challenging, particularly when further shop closures would appear to be inevitable.