Who would have thought back in 2018 that by February 2022 it would be entirely normal and acceptable practice for people to work very flexibly from home and office (a hybrid model), and not always require to be at their office desk? But for Covid-19 it would surely have taken decades for such new working habits to evolve at the speed they have. Covid-19 has for sure resulted in better work/life balances for people across the globe and this should be welcomed. That said, personal contact and the ability to interact in person is always so important and impossible to fully replicate in a virtual way. Therefore, a healthy flexible balance of working from home and office must be the long-term preference. When it comes to training junior colleagues or meeting new clients or indeed pitching for new work, there is no doubt that this is always better and more effectively done in person than virtually.  

We should however be so thankful for Zoom and MS teams and how they have frankly saved us during the pandemic. Where would we have been without them? The surge in use of MS teams and Zoom and other such virtual applications has enabled a healthy flexible working environment to flourish since March 2020. However just imagine for a moment how bad things could have been if Covid-19 had hit e.g. 20 years ago: where we would have had no such virtual technology to "bail us out".  So many more businesses would have surely ceased trading as they would have been crippled and unable to function remotely, and there would probably have been much greater unemployment (even with the support of any furlough scheme). Unlike the inventors of the various Covid-19 vaccines, these virtual technology providers haven’t perhaps really received the public plaudits and recognition they fully deserve, as people tend to just accept technological advance for granted. The fact is that we owe virtual technology providers a great deal, even if they have done very well financially themselves since March 2020. Thank you virtual technology.