The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated shifts across business and the economy, entrenching new technologies and displacing millions who now work remotely in a way that few firms had contemplated before. Mass job retention schemes and waves of unemployment will raise fundamental questions about the future of the workplace. As the conversation shifts from lockdown to how businesses safely return to productivity, views may well diverge on the future of traditional practices too.

I suspect that for those of us suffering Zoom-fatigue, lockdown will have reinforced the appeal of personal connection – building trust, intimacy and rapport have always provided critical momentum in the engine room of the economy. Redundancies may be deep, and automation accelerated, yet this crisis will in part be amplified by the effect that lockdown and social distancing inevitably have on business relationships. Working remotely, our economies will struggle fully to recover or realise their growth potential.