What will be the new normal for offices?

ON MAY 10TH Boris Johnson, the prime minister, is expected to outline the beginning of the end of lockdown. Non-essential shops will start to reopen and factories will gradually get back to work, while maintaining sensible distancing.

For the deskbound, not much will change. Unlike pubs, restaurants and non-essential retailers, offices were not closed by government decree. Instead, since late March, the government has been encouraging those who can work from home to do so. As The Economist went to press, it was due to issue guidance on how to work safely in offices. The main thrust is expected to be, for now, not to.

A few will start to return. Those who need better IT support and faster broadband than they have at home will be back sooner. Banks expect traders to work from either their normal offices or from disaster-recovery sites. Charlie Rudd, chief executive of Leo Burnett, an advertising firm, reckons design and production staff will be among the first back: “when you’re dealing with big files of high-quality material domestic Wi-Fi is not great”. But for now, the numbers are likely to be small. Nicolas Aubert, head of British operations at WillisTowersWatson, an advisory firm, says that “it’s going to be a very small percentage of our population, we believe that is going to be roughly 25%...