Moving to the country ?

I saw this headline the The Australian newspaper today….

“Hundreds of thousands of Australians could abandon the office in the wake of COVID-19, in a potential boon to small businesses and regional towns…

Rather than such news stories being a passing fad, COVID-19 is a real opportunity to encourage regional living.

It would allow government to re-distribute monies towards “the regions” and ease the pressures which metropolitan living places on transportation along with other infrastructure and services.

In my industry alone (finance), COVID-19 has already forced many stockbrokers to work from home.

This was never a possibility in the past.

Why ?

Because we were required to work within centralised offices in order to monitor us from a compliance basis.

Over the past few months, I haven’t heard this proximity pre-requisite being a concern amongst industry friends.

Why not let it continue ?

And similarly for other industries (whether or not employees need to be overseen), COVID-19 should give them the opportunity to move to less congested and perhaps safer communities.

If employees needn’t work in a close-knit team, remote work indeed should be a boon for regional towns and an option for the employee.