At least when I was in iGaming operations, working from home was one of those mythical things that most people heard about, but never got to experience. Sure, some people had company blackberries, iPhones or laptops, but the majority of the job still got done in the office, because that’s where everybody was supposed to be.

Even as technology improved, and we had the capability to have entire teams work remotely, very few did. Although we emphasized that each of us should be responsible to our work, and respect our teams’ ability to work without heavy oversight, there was this feeling that very few could accomplish their goals without someone hovering over them.

That might be starting to change. Due to the conditions imposed on all of us during this COVID-19 outbreak, more people are working from home than ever before. I don’t have a study to prove that, but I just feel it to be true. And while gambling operations have encouraged staff to be at the office and be with their teams in the past, they’re being forced to adapt to remote working arrangements in the moment.

Is this all temporary, or will businesses find there are benefits to having more flexible working arrangements long term? My hunch is that they will. Allowing responsible individuals the option to decide on their own work environments has an obvious cost savings in office space, but could also lead to more motivated employees who contribute more over the long run. And as many of us are discovering from our home offices, when there’s no office complex to escape after an 8 hour shift, people tend to put in longer hours, too.