David Zweig, a University of Toronto management expert, apologizes for the delay in answering an interview request this week.

“I’m going on a video call in about five minutes,” Zweig explains.

“It’s the new normal,” the homebound academic adds.

If anything can be said to be normal in these fraught times — adrift on a wave of virus — it’s that millions of people have taken to working, learning and buying from home with aplomb.

For many, that domesticated toil, education and commerce may long outlive COVID-19, however tenacious it proves to be, Zweig says.

“This basically ripped a Band-Aid off for trying all these different methods of working,” he says.

“Working remotely, not having to commute. We’ve learned that we can adapt. And some people might not want to go back to how it was before.”

Zweig, a professor of organizational behaviour and human resources at the school’s Scarborough campus, predicts that a hybrid approach to working will emerge from the viral disruptions, with some people toiling occasionally, often or entirely from home.

While many organizations will doubtless see a return to pre-COVID-19 arrangements, others — especially those businesses where technology easily allows it — will become largely or partially off-site enterprises.

“I don’t think everyone is going to be like, ‘Hey, I want to go back to driving an hour each way to work when I know I can work perfectly well from home,’ ” he says.

“I’m an extrovert, I’m going crazy not having social interactions, but for others this is ideal.”

Thus phrases like hotelling, where office desks and equipment are scheduled and shared, and hot-desking, where one desk is shared through shifts, are now becoming more common in the workplace lexicon, Zweig says.

And such newfangled arrangements have the obvious advantage of saving companies money on equipment and office space.

The costs of the dispersals, however, are just as obvious, Zweig says.

“For one thing, it’s going to be very hard to build a sense of culture with people if they are all working remotely, particularly people working in teams,” he says.

“And to try to … socialize people into the way that the organization does things, that’s gong to be really tough.”

While more and less extroverted people would take to the home office with differing inclinations, most everyone would need some mental bolstering, he says.

“I’m trying to take my own advice in telling people to take breaks and make sure that they take some time to clear their heads and step away from work,” Zweig says.

“I also advise people to create your own workspace wherever you can … so that everyone in your home knows that once you’re in your workspace they need to try to not interrupt, and for you to know that once you’re in it, it’s time to go to work.”

It’s not just work, however, that will take on a greater homespun aspect because of the pandemic, Zweig says.

Eduction and commerce will also be pixelated to a greater extent.

That’s especially true with home shopping, which, already ascendant, is soaring even higher during the current crisis, says Jan De Silva, president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade.

“We certainly would agree that the movement to a digital economy is going to be accelerated through this situation,” De Silva says.

“Amazon, food by phone — all of these folks are ramping up right now just to deal with demand, and I do believe it is going to set the stage for us to move up to a higher level of e-consumption,” she says.

For his part, Zweig has fallen in love with the idea of online grocery shopping in particular.

“I can’t wait to go out to a restaurant, I can’t wait to get out of my house and go for a coffee,” he says. “But for many of us, the question is, ‘Why would we ever go to a grocery store again?’ ”

De Silva believes that this online-ordering uptick will far surpass and outlast the work-from-home exodus caused by the pandemic.

“I’m not sure how long the work-from-home environment will continue to be as prevalent, it’s more the consumption side of things we would see going digital.”

Indeed, De Silva’s own staff is housebound now and chomping at the bit to get back to the office, she says.

“There’s a little bit of stir craziness going on where people just want to get back together into a place where they can collaborate directly,” De Silva says.

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“I think there are still roles that will need to be fulfilled in a workplace, but certainly on the consumption side of things we would see this being much more of a shift to digital e-commerce.”

As for education, which is being conducted online across Ontario by post-secondary schools, the far-flung form is less than ideal, Zweig says.

“We’re doing the best we can with the online tools available to us,” Zweig says, adding that he’s constantly nonplussed by the silences that greet his online jokes these days.

“But will it replace in-person, in-class delivery? I don’t think so.”

While the cost savings online education reaps may prompt universities and colleges to create hybrid options, most students would be loath to miss out on the social and learning benefits a milling campus brings.

Elizabeth Hall, executive director of the Ontario Bar Association, is working from home with her lawyer husband and two young children, both of whom just received their first FaceTime piano lesson this week.

By a fortunate coincidence, Hall says the association had dedicated this year to innovation, in particular to the spread of technology that would make working from home more seamless.

“And it has worked incredibly well so far,” Hall says of her office, whose staff are all working remotely.

Hall has little doubt the pandemic will speed the spread of technology through the profession, and says the association is working with government and the courts to make remote work more possible.

For example, it helped build a virtual hearing capacity in the courts that Hall hopes will continue after the pandemic breaks.

“This necessity is the mother of invention and the mother of the purchase of invention,” Hall says of the pandemic.

But Hall admits that she misses interaction with her colleagues.

“In terms of whether it’s appealing permanently, I would say that going down the hall, as they say, to talk to a colleague is a lot harder virtually,” she says.

“We’ve been on Zoom meetings, we’ve been dropping in on each other on Zoom, so it’s been fun in a way, but it isn’t quite as appealing as face-to-face contact, and it isn’t quite as easy as face-to-face contact when you’re in the office next to someone.”

For those workers who are currently deemed essential and for whom home work is not an option, Zweig says employers must offer as much support as they can muster.

“I’m sure every time someone steps into (their store) they might be thinking to themselves, ‘Is this the one?’ ” he says. “And I imagine that is incredible stressful … so employers have to be incredibly supportive.”

In the end, however, Zweig says work and the economy will return full force.

“Of course we’ll come back, we’re resilient,” he says.

“We may come back to a slightly different situation then when we started, but that’s OK.”