Over the last three months, coronavirus has spread to more than 100 countries and claimed more than 3,800 lives (as of 8th March 2020). It has also plunged many global industries into a paralysis, from canceled flights and mass quarantines to disruptions in supply chains and financial markets. Setting aside the serious health implications of the outbreak, the coronavirus epidemic has, in an unorthodox way, amplified a debate over the future of work. With millions of people around the world working from home as a result of the outbreak, whether through quarantine or as a company precaution, the question is being asked by outlets around the world: are we seeing the beginning of the end of the traditional office typology?

Let’s be clear. Coronavirus will not directly and irreversibly destroy the concept of working in traditional office buildings. However, it has indeed forced a major global ‘work-from-home’ experiment that, when businesses, cities, and societies return to normality, may cause a reflection on the benefits of working from home, or at the very least, a change in the traditional office typology. This experiment is on a scale like no other. Since early February, millions of Chinese employees have been working from home, while Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, told Seattle workers to work from home in early March. Throughout February, 77 public companies on the global stock market mentioned “working from home” in transcripts: up from five the previous month, and significantly more than the previous record of 11 in 2018.

The coronavirus may have caused a spike in remote employees, but it was not a genesis. The number of regular work-from-home employees in the United States has risen by 173% since 2005, now standing at 4.7million employees or 3.4% of the workforce. Meanwhile, 5% of employees in the European Union work from home as of 2017, with concentrations in the Netherlands (13.7%), Luxembourg (12.7%), and Finland (12.3%).