From everything I’m reading these days, it seems likely the year or so of Covid lockdowns will turn out to have as big an effect on the world of work as the Chicxulub asteroid had on dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Everything will be different.

Report after report globally says that those who have been able to work from home during the pandemic want to continue doing so in the future. Maybe not every day of the week, but for some days. The benefits have now been experienced first-hand by us all.

Indeed, hours freed up from the stress and expense of daily travel have been applied instead to working more efficiently and enjoying a better balance between work and home life.

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That is not to say that working from home all the time necessarily creates a healthy work-life balance. It does not, as many self-employed people will attest. It is as necessary to interact with colleagues and business associates as it is to be at home with your family, but it seems unnecessary to do so in person each and every working day of the year.

It is clear hybrid arrangements – a mix between working remotely and in the office – are the new preferred reality for many, and jobs in the future that are structured in such a way will be the jobs most people will be attracted to.

And if the world of work is changing then I would expect the world of retirement to be changing, too – at least for the millions who may be about to enjoy future careers shaped by the benefits of a flexible working week.

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For them, at least, it could signal the end of the notion of cliff-edge retirement that shaped our ideas on pensions throughout the 20th century, with its ingrained 9-to-5 culture and twin plagues of absenteeism and presenteeism.

The idea that every one of us should suddenly stop work at an arbitrarily fixed age will hopefully one day soon come to be seen as the pure nonsense it always has done to some of us.

Steve Bee is director of Work Life Benefits