One of the things that the current crisis has already demonstrated is the need for adaptability. Whether it is in the products or services that you offer or in the way you deliver them, then we have had to change and quickly.

Although I have been working at home over the last three years as my base, I have always made it point of honour to go and see potential clients wherever they are situated as I always felt that this was the best way of getting to know them.

One of my biggest assets was an ability to read body language and I always thought that this was better done face to face.

How wrong have I been? Well, it was possibly predicated on my fear of technology. How could I, a self-confessed Luddite be able to manage myriad pieces of technology that was for a younger generation. Possibly it was because of an earlier foray into a video telephone call with my daughter via Skype when the link was poor, and I had no idea as to where the camera was on my phone. I know my daughter was most amused, but I wasn't. I've always been a person who felt he had to show his competence at all times and the technology was apparently showing my ignorance and fallibility.

Because in the last few weeks I've had to rely on technology I have suddenly become more confident I'm competent in its usage albeit with a few stumbles along the way. My issue with seeing the body language of the people I am dealing with is no longer an issue because the technology has improved vastly from my initial ventures. Admittedly the larger meetings can be somewhat problematical unless you have a strong and competent chair but as most of my meetings are in smaller groups I find not only confidence in getting all the nuances of body language I need, but also the advantage of not having to drive long distances or long train journeys taking up significant parts of the day. Most definitely as a one to one meeting medium it is as effective as being in the same room.

So how do we get from here to property issues for employers? Particularly when you are small business, property costs can be a significant part of your overheads but even as the organisation grows so your need for accommodation and more importantly fit for purpose accommodation changes exponentially. The days of having individual offices for individual members of staff or indeed even individual desks for individual staff are passing with every year. With more open plan and hot desking than ever before, we are demonstrating every day during the crisis that we can work from anywhere and have team meetings without having to move long distances.

So why do we still need such expensive office accommodation? Now of course that is a very sweeping statement and there are many businesses who need premises to operate from for example manufacturing and warehousing . However, the demise of the High Street shopping experience has demonstrated more eloquently then anything how we find different ways of working.

The lockdown has of course done great damage to our economy. Jobs have been lost and businesses have had to cease, in some cases for good. However, as a general rule of thumb the crisis has given us pause for thought about how we work. Now is a great time to review what your business is going to look like in the next year or two and one of those areas is how we are going to run our organization including our property needs.

When home working became possible a number of years ago, we talked about how good it would be for the environment because it would remove the need for travelling long distances for business and take traffic off the road. During the intervening period, nothing could be further from the truth as our roads and rush hour rail traffic has become increasingly fraught. Witness however the last three months when traffic has decreased significantly and the quality of the air that we breathe has become appreciably better in areas of our population that were being poisoned. During that time, many have been able to conduct their business from home and thus the need for significant property costs could be reassessed.

This is not a proposition that applies across the board, but it is important to learn some lessons from this. And one of these is most definitely how we use property assets within our organisations and whether we could operate differently and save some overhead costs. Yes, there might need to be investment in better technology and broadband might need further investment nationally, but on a case by case basis, it needs to be looked at to get the best out of our assets both human and physical.

I might still be a Luddite at heart and I still want to have human rather than electronic contact (and yes I still want to physically choose my clothes and my fresh produce) but instead of sitting in a traffic jam I might well opt for an electronic meeting in future.