My top 5 predictions for remote work in 2021

Hope everyone had a reasonably good start to the new year and you had time to spend with your loved ones. Well, I thought to kick off this year with some predictions of what this year will have in store for us, and which trends we can expect to see.

1. Impact on our apartments and houses
   
   Due to the increase of remote work, we'll start to see changes in apartment and housing requirements going forward. It will become more of a given to have an extra office at home, that can actually be used for working. This might have a long-term impact on architecture in general in how we design apartment complexes. It’s not suitable to work from the couch all day, especially with Software like Zoom, Teams, and others becoming standard and doing important calls from home. I think we’ll start to see the tip of the iceberg this year.
   
2. Office Spaces
   
   Of course, not all offices are just going to close down and everything will be 100% remote work going forward. But with remote work being more of a regular thing, I expect offices to change. Office workspaces will become more suited for collaboration (like co-working spaces) as it's more of an optional workspace for employees. The need for office space might even go back a little, and there might be more room for apartments. Many new office buildings are often designed in a way that they can be turned into apartment complexes rather quickly.
   
3. New opportunities for co-working spaces
   
   Co-working spaces are rising for a few years, and some have already started to close down again as the competition became really tough. Now the market can change again. Co-working spaces that offer reasonable day prices or even hourly options will see a rise in adoption. Also, I expect most of them have to stock up on phone booths as doing calls will become more of a norm and hard requirement for people.
   
4. New Jobs in many fields
   
   There will be new job opportunities at tech companies for remote-focused positions. Either as “Head of Remote” to help steer the growing needs for remote work in the company. Making sure the company culture adapts and people can stay productive will be a challenge, and having professionals take care of this will be a hard requirement. This also opens the doors for consultation around these topics. Consulting work for successful remote collaboration will become even interesting in fields you might not expect. (e.g. youth care, health departments, insurances, ...)
   
5. Online payments will become more accepted
   
   With the pandemic, we’ve seen the rise of online sales and many stores finally venturing into the webshop area. People started to become more comfortable paying for goods, digital products, entertainment, and even SaaS (like Zoom, Slack) through their browsers. Probably even VPNs according to YouTube ads I get spammed with every time. What is interesting about this development is the fact that even in countries like Austria (where I live), and Credit Cards are not super well-distributed, the majority of the banks started to switch to Debit Cards throughout the last year. Now being able to pay online with the default bank card is a game-changer for many. So online revenue can be expected to grow across the board. And this means working remotely will pay off.

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These are my predictions for this year, and I am excited to see it all play out. Let me hear in the comments what you think. With all that, I wish yall a happy new year!