Express & Star comment: The sooner we're back in the office the better

It won't be like going back after a holiday break, when people ask if you had a good time, you try to catch up on the workplace news and gossip you've missed, and there's work piled up waiting for you.

Instead the place will have been empty or virtually empty. It will be like a huge animal reawakening.

With many people having followed the Government advice and working from home, or having been on furlough for months, the return to the familiar environment may come as a shock to the system.

It will mean directly interacting with colleagues once again, rather than them being a voice at the end of a phone or a face at the end of a Zoom call.

Craig Jackson, professor of occupational health psychology at Birmingham City University, warns that for many the return to the office may be nothing short of traumatic. He thinks a number of problems may manifest themselves on the return to work and wants employers to be aware.

Well, there is that, but working from home or being stuck at home is in comparison a lonely business without social interaction, or social anything. If it is true that most communication is non-verbal, then the ability to see work colleagues face-to-face, to see the whites of their eyes if you want to put it like that, is a much easier way to co-operate and work together and get things done.

So the quicker we get back to workplace normal, the better from a lot of standpoints.

Having said that, we have learned much from lockdown – that working from home can be part of a more flexible approach to work when needed, and that meetings can be carried out on Zoom rather than having to spend a day travelling to a meeting place.

We should therefore get back to work with gusto, but also take what we have learned to make us better workers.

And it may prove the case that after being back at work for a short time it will feel as if we have never been away.